


In a Lengthening Sun

by trulily



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - End of Game of Thrones, End days, Eventually other pairings, F/M, I guess I should stress that this is mega angsty, More characters to appear later, Mostly show canon, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Picking up from where s7 left off, Podrick and Brienne's friendship, Slow Burn, Some book canon, cw: mentions of rape, like a weird love child of the show and the books? idk, really none of S8 is in this story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2019-10-08 08:46:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 33
Words: 71,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17383412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trulily/pseuds/trulily
Summary: Brienne rides north with Podrick to rejoin the Starks and prepare for the coming battle of their time. Back in the south, Jaime Lannister begins his own journey. They'll meet each other where their paths intertwine.Weaving an alternative version of their story that gives them more time together (and gives me the ending that I would have wanted).This became a fix-it fic of sorts pretty much as soon as S8 began to air, and I haven't looked back since. J/B centric but generally following the larger plot of the story's conclusion.





	1. Brienne I

The dawn that met her was grey, the sky above shadowless and thick with dark branches whose few leaves trembled stiffly in the air. For a long moment after waking, she lay unmoving beneath her woolen blanket, her back pressed against the cold earth. Beside her she could hear the boy chasing the last of his dreams. He would be tired, he was always tired from riding. She told herself she would let him stir on his own. _Let him dream a little longer still._ A terse gust raked through the boughs then, lifting the fringe of her hair from her forehead and sending a chill through her.

Of late Brienne dreamed very little, and when she did they were dark dreams that drove her startled from her sleep. The first night she and Podrick had made camp after their party dispersed from King’s Landing, she had dreamed she was in a room hewn from black stone deep below the surface of the ground, where several baths also cut from the same oily stone glowed pale and green with hot, stewing water. She had sunk her naked body down into the heat of the water, that it would obscure her nakedness and warm her. _If I think of him he will come_ , reasoned a voice that told her this dream was more like memory than a fiction. _A little company in this strange dark place._ She thought urgently of Jaime, but he never arrived. The dream went on until the room felt as though it would close in on her and forget her there beneath its stone forever. Anxiously she scrubbed her arms with water. Then descending from a steep stair came a woman robed in black, and Brienne saw that it was Cersei, her feet falling on the stones without sound and a torch shining down from her arm. Her hair was not worn short as it had been in the Dragonpit, rather it fell to her shoulders like her twin’s had once when Brienne had first known him. The torchlight caught the twisted locks of gold brightly, and it glowered across her face and danced on the weave of her gown. Brienne tried to cover herself, but the woman only laughed. From the sleeve of her extended arm, dark shadows leapt away from the light. These shadows fell into forms, human forms, though they stood weightlessly on the floor, with no life in them. Ghosts of the dead filled the room, their eyes wanting, and Brienne awoke, gasping. 

Earlier that day, before she dreamed of the baths, the procession departing the Dragonpit had been swift, with Jaime trailing at the heels of Cersei’s men rushing to rejoin the Keep. She had greeted the back of his head while he strode away from her, and he scarcely turned to look. Anger and fear pulled her stomach taut. Was he unmoved by what they had just seen? Death itself had come animate, had jumped and clawed at its tether. Her own arm jumped out and dared to grab him at the shoulder, wrenching him around to face her. 

“Talk to the queen,” she pleaded.

“And tell her what?” he clipped back, his eyes hard. He had turned away from her then, and gone.

Now she and Pod were far up the Kingsroad, the little warmth of the south long faded. Thin blue lines of smoke rose up from the small buildings of homesteads they passed, and during the day while they walked the road, ruts left by the drag of wagon and hoof grew sharper and hard with the cold. Pod’s round cheeks glowed flush in the shortening evening light, and Brienne had to blow often into her hands to warm them from their hold on the reins. Yesterday morning, a dry snow had fallen for several hours, and when it stopped it shuffled in tight, circling drafts about the horses’ feet. 

_Winter has come_ , Brienne thought as she watched the sky brighten with morning from where she lay. She shut her eyes, and the Stark children’s faces moved there beneath her eyelids, the dead boy-king Robb, Jon Snow, then Bran, Arya, and Sansa. She imagined Lady Catelyn last of the Starks, struggling to see her face. How long had it been since she had departed from her, the oath she had sworn new and resolved in her heart? Brienne found she could fathom the passing time no more than she could clearly recall the woman’s features. Yet time had indeed run on, the cold’s tightening grip insisted on it, as did the sword lying sharp and still beside her in its scabbard, and so too the lines setting hard in her face, and the days in their bleak march. Thinking of all this, something as brittle as the leaves above threatened to snap somewhere deep within her.

“Pod,” Brienne said, opening her eyes. 

The boy rose hurriedly at the sound of his name. She heard him begin to crash around the wood, first to make water, then no doubt to hunt for bits of kindling to collect.

“Pod,” she said again. She arose herself and began to straighten her things. “No fire. We’ll move quickly this morning.”

She wanted to be on from this place. The sooner she could set herself again in the service of Sansa Stark, the more at rights she would feel. She had to get back there, and swiftly, as no word had reached her from Winterfell since they had departed, and she misliked that Littlefinger would be lurking about her halls with no telling what he intended. Had he been the one to counsel Sansa to send Brienne off, away from where she could watch over her? Or had something Brienne done prompted her dismissal? She racked her mind again for what must have been the hundredth time since she and Podrick set off south, coursing over the few days before the raven came and with it Sansa’s order, but for the hundredth time she found nothing, and only the shivering of the trees rose up to meet the silence of her thoughts.

Podrick let the kindling drop from his arms with a quiet crash at her request and came to her with his hands full of her armor instead, and Brienne let his fingers labor at her shoulders, finishing some of the fastenings herself while he worked. They broke their fast on a hard heel of bread and some crumbling cheese and said no more to each other. Once the remainders of their camp was broken down, she tightened the tack on her mare before pulling herself up to sit astride her and giving a slight squeeze with her legs, prompting them on.

As they rode out from under the trees, Brienne thought again of the look in Jaime’s eyes as he turned away from her. He hadn’t looked back once he’d gone.

 

 


	2. Brienne II

“Remember to tighten your hold on the reins,” she said, breaking the long silence between them. “Else she can’t feel your hand.”

Pod straightened a little in his saddle and did as she said, taking the slack out of the reins. The mare responded and ceased her weaving and bobbing. “Oh,” said the boy almost joyfully. 

“Yes,” said Brienne. How had he still not learned? _You’re a poor rider, Pod, a dangerous thing for a knight._ She chewed her cheek, though, and did not speak again. In the evenings, after Pod drooped in the saddle and the cold crept over them both and she called a halt to the day’s progress, she kept up their sparring lessons, as she had since their first real trek together through the mountains. He was still awkward, and she held herself from striking with much strength, but the lad was improving. She had tried to be more instructive with him around the horses, too, but beneath his inexperience, Podrick seemed to fear them, and that sort of fear was difficult to break. Though perhaps the time of great houses and their knights had passed, and nothing she could do would ready either of them for what was coming. It was a grim thought. She set her mouth into a firm line and kicked her palfrey ahead of the boy.

The sun was low in the sky when they came upon a man and woman struggling with the wheel of a cart in a smear of icy slush. 

“Hullo, sers,” called the man, waving a bit of sopped rag at them in greeting. He ran the rag once across his face before he slapped it back over his neck.

Brienne slowed her horse to a stop and regarded them carefully. An older couple, poorly dressed, with a white-faced mule that was nibbling idly off the footpath. Several heavy sacks of what looked to be grain perched on their cart, and apples and a few moth-eaten cabbages tumbled to the ground where the thing rutted up on its side. She ignored the ser.

“Trouble with the road?”

“Aye,” said the man. “My back is too worn for this work. Though you look plenty strong, perhaps you and your boy might right my wheel?”

“Clerrance,” said the woman from his side. She shifted on her feet.

He squinted up at Brienne with a queer look, seeming to realize only then that it was a woman he addressed. “Ah,” Clerrance added, “milady.”

“We haven’t any money,” said the woman cagily. 

Was the woman concerned they were a pair of brigands? They were near the Neck now, at its base in fact, and soon the country would thin out to long stretches of exposed moor. Bad place to come into trouble on the Kingsroad, with little place to hide. When she and Podrick had come down this way before on their way to King’s Landing, they had encountered nothing outside the ordinary, but the woman’s distrust worried her. Brienne dismounted and walked her horse to Pod.

“No matter,” said Brienne. She squatted down by the cart and braced herself against the axel. “Push it on while I lift.”

Together they refitted the wheel onto the cart. The woman set about hitching the mule while the man wiped his face again. _Nervous still._

“Where are you heading?” Brienne asked when it was done. 

“Why ought we tell?” countered the woman.

“Wife,” said the man, but he seemed no more eager to share their journey.

“I will do you no harm,” said Brienne, tired now. “If I meant to, I would have done already.” Hard words, but the road was darkening quickly, she and Pod would need to stop somewhere soon. The longer they lingered here, the more they would regret it later. Though, perhaps these people knew something useful. Smallfolk always did: they were the hands that worked the land and the eyes that saw it clear. And if there was danger ahead of them…

“Hana’s place, an inn in Grey Grass just on from here,” the woman offered at last with a sniff. “We’re bringing goods to do trade before the road gets too heavy with snow.”

“Let us ride with you, then, and see you safely there.”

Clerrance regarded her as many other men had before him, with doubt and something close to laughter in the eyes.

“Begging your pardon, milady, but I never heard tell of no lady knight—”

“She’s Brienne of Tarth,” volunteered Pod suddenly from behind them.

The horses jerked their heads in his hand as the three of them turned to look at him, but he held the animals still, a serious expression on his face. She might have smiled, if she did not have reason to fear her name turning to currency in the mouths of these strangers. Cersei may have made her truce with Jon and the Targaryen, but word traveled slowly this far from the capital, away from the dealings of queens. The land was still pocked by war, and soldiers and deserters alike drifted from town to town. She’d had no need of his defense just then, sweet though it was, and now she felt even more eager to remain in the old traders’ company at least until she knew she could put enough distance between them, or until any suspicion the old couple’s wariness gave her proved empty. Inwardly she cursed the boy, but she remained firm.

“How far a ride to Grey Grass, to this inn?”

Clerrance helped his wife up into the cart before going round to climb the wheel to its seat. “A little ways on still. And off the road a bit. The wheel slowed us. You’ll come?” he said, and with an air of bemusement, he added, “Brienne of Tarth?”

“We will.”

“We have no pay,” he reminded them.

“We’ll take no pay,” she said. If it was as the man said, it would not take them far off their course and would set them into no great delay come morning. A night off the ground would do both Podrick and her good, and the horses needed resting after how hard she had been pushing them for the past few days. 

As answer, the man flicked the old mule’s reins, and the cart pulled wobbling from the trough.

When night began to fall at last and they left the foothills of the Vale to the south and east, the trees dropped away to the rare hedge, and shy hands of heather and runted grass twitched across the ground far as the eye could see. It would be a clear night, the day’s cloud cover blown far north from their road, but there wasn’t much moon to guide them, and the stars shone like pricks of hard and unfeeling gems in the deepening darkness. The man and wife had kept little conversation with either Brienne or Podrick in the last few hours, which gave her plenty of quiet to consider the old pair of traders and whether she was at all justified in feeling nervous about their encounter. It was perhaps a hundred leagues southeast from here that she and Jaime had been captured, once, in the woods that crowded the ruin of Maidenpool; experience had taught her the arrogance of optimism, even an optimism born of duty. _They’re harmless though,_ she thought, _likely only worried by your grim face and any occasion that visits them into the world of knights and nobles._ Likelier still, they had never heard of her isle of Tarth in all their days and had no care for who she was, where she hailed from, nor whom she served. What did it matter if they knew her name, besides? There was no other woman like her in the world. The repute of her looks would sooner give her away if anyone did come looking for the Maid of Tarth.

“Turn here,” called Clerrance, and Brienne guided her horse after them, edging onto a path that was lesser worn and narrow. She could not see where it led, because the ground rose darkly to a low hill ahead, and beyond that there was only growing shadow. She squinted and nudged her mare up the lip of the path onto the grass and forward to ride astride the cart.

“Nearly there,” he said from beside her.

But that did not concern Brienne. “You thought before that I would rob you,” she tested.

In what little light remained, she watched the whites of the man’s eyes flash toward her then away.

“Some men come ranging through this way not long past,” he said at last. “Broken men.” 

So she was right. “Who? Did they bear a banner?”

“Broken, I said. Does it matter?” The man glanced back at Podrick and hurried the mule with two brisk cracks of his reins. “Your boy carries no banner that I see.”

 _And I a plain oak shield._ It was not wise in this country to declare Stark arms, despite the Knights of the Vale heeding Sansa’s call to aid. Not while Petyr Baelish still crept Winterfell’s halls, she told herself. And her own azure and rose sigil of House Tarth felt somewhere far away, in another lifetime perhaps. Unbidden she thought again as she had before, _Perhaps the days of great houses and their knights are at an end._ She wondered absently whether she would ever see her isle again. A cold dread filled her heart since the display at the Dragonpit, and stories her septa Roelle had indulged her once of the Long Night rose to her memory from that other lifetime like bubbles escaping the weight of water.

At the bottom of the hill, the road widened, and lights shone from the windows of a few thatched houses leaning against each other in the dark.

“That there is Grey Grass,” said the man. 

Hardly a village at all, Grey Grass was more a hamlet hidden by a bit of hedge, but Brienne found herself warmed by the sight of the humble roofs huddled in the cold and the knowing that they would sup on something warm tonight. Once they descended the narrow path down toward the inn, Brienne gave Pod the task of brushing out the horses and told him to come and meet her inside for a meal when he was done. While the man and wife unloaded a few armfuls from the cart, she stalked over to them and slung two sacks of barleycorn over her shoulder as well.

The woman opened her mouth to complain, but Brienne’s mouth was quicker, for once. “Come, I’ll see you inside.”

“You’re a mite strong, aren’t you,” the bent old woman said as she and Brienne ducked into the entrance, her voice resigned. Often it was the men who had something to say about her physique. She’d had a lifetime of japes and judgment. But this woman’s remark didn’t cut her, it only made her think of that Tyrell Queen of Thorns, who had praised her. _Aren’t you just marvelous,_ she had said, without a hint of malice. _Absolutely singular._ Recalling that made Brienne’s spine pull a little straighter and inexplicably stung the corner of her eyes. But that had been a warm day, a day of summer, not steel, and the air had smelled of citrus trees. Olenna Tyrell was gone now, she reminded herself, another ghost. Brienne had heard of the Lannister army’s sack of Highgarden, and of the quick and total retaliation over the lions by Daenerys Targaryen on the Goldenroad.

As their eyes adjusted to the candlelight within the inn, a woman swayed over to them on a stiff leg. She eyed them just as suspiciously as Brienne and Pod had been greeted on the road.

“Who’s this you brought in, Merry?" 

“Ask her yourself,” said the goodwife Merry, dropping a basket of meager produce on the table between them.

“Only a traveler, looking for a night’s rest for myself and my squire,” said Brienne dryly. “Have you any supper?”

“Aye,” said Hana the innkeep, “and some ale if you’ll be wanting it.”

“Two then, and two ales and two beds. I’ll pay for the man and his goodwife, too.” She had a full enough purse to attempt to buy their favor still, should any trouble come following on her heels, and anyway she would not miss the coins. She counted out the silver pieces into the woman’s hand and took up the flagon of ale offered to her.

After Hana’s poultry stew had settled in her stomach, she dug out a few copper pennies and asked the innkeep to draw her a bath. Podrick lingered before the hearth, and though Brienne suspected he might doze off by the fire, she decided she had little reason to worry for him just now. The inn was empty of patrons except the pair they’d met on the road and Hana, her kin, and her washing girl. She trudged up the stair to their small room, the woman following with two sloshing pails of hot water, and waited while Hana worked. The innkeep made one more trip with the water, then left her with an empty pail to spill over herself. Brienne stripped off the remaining armor she still wore before stepping out of her underclothes. In the meager candlelight she regarded the length of her body briefly and saw it as it always was, unearthly pale and roped with thick cords of muscle. Sometimes, when she had been only a few years younger than she was now, just a brief glance could make her throat tighten and she had to quickly look elsewhere before disgust and longing seized over her. Tonight though she felt distant, far outside herself. She slipped down into the tub and let the heat sink into her, craning her head forward over the water. Her thighs ached from holding her mare all through the day’s cold, and she rubbed them in slow circles, shutting her eyes. Her thoughts edged to that dream she’d had a few nights back, the dream of the baths and shadows. But it was a troubling dream, and only drove her to the memory that must have brought it out in her in the first: the bath she had shared with Jaime Lannister in the bowels of Harrenhal. She had held him in her arms, the both of them naked as they had been born into the world, and his shoulders had felt narrow in her grasp, weak as a sparrow, but beautiful, and close to death. But that, too, troubled her, and brusquely she brought a pail of water down on her head.  

Later, after the water had grown cold and Podrick had come in to sleep, she nestled down onto the straw bed and tried to quiet her mind, but sleep did not come easily. Instead she listened to the soft breaths of Pod across the room and gazed up at the stars from the small window their room afforded. A draft crept under the sill and chilled her exposed face, but Brienne did not care much. She only watched the stars slide down toward the horizon in their slow trek across the inky band of sky. _Don’t let me dream tonight,_ she thought to anyone who might listen.

 

 


	3. Jaime I

Up Jaime rode along the Greenfork, a strong wind blowing at his back. Yesterday he had crossed at the Trident, where he had thought all of a sudden, _Ghosts lie at my every turn._ Even behind. Especially behind. Bile turned in his stomach to think of all he’d left there in King’s Landing. All that he’d left, and nothing.

After he had come cantering through the winding city streets that seemed oddly emptied, after he had passed under the north-most gate and no one had given him command to stop, after he had gone under the shade of the sea pines and summited the high hill where the the shrubs and grasses shifted in an auspicious breeze, only then had he turned to see the city one last time, and he had seen it huddled far below, insignificant against the land and sea that encircled it. The Red Keep's spires rose like needle pricks over the city, and its walls normally so rich with the warm color of earth appeared solemn and mute under the sky that loomed above. Jaime thought the whole place may as well have been a ruin, its people already centuries gone and the memories held within its walls long faded. _My children have perished there_ , he thought, _my children and my father._ But the children were never truly his. He had never accepted them, had never been able to or had not been bold enough. Only Myrcella he had claimed at the end, but even for her his boldness had come too late, and the back-churn of his sister’s wrath and all the ill deeds of his family had ensured that the princess would die. He could almost feel her curls again under his hand while he had held her and moved the stray hairs from her stilled face. In a dark alcove of the keep Cersei had moved her hand across her belly and told him there was one more child yet to come, but Jaime would not break another oath for her. Not for her, and not for this child. If there truly was a child. It was cold on top of the hill, that or the warmth of shock that had accompanied him through his flight from the city had by then leeched away, and Jaime paused to wrench a leather glove onto his golden hand. A single flake of snow had fallen onto his glove and melted away. Jaime glanced wondering at the sky as a shiver went through him, and he kicked his horse on.

When he had come to the Trident he let the south and all his remorse for it stay where it was now, behind him. Instead at his crossing he considered what lay west. West was the road to Riverrun, where he had once been a boy at Hoster Tully’s table, pleading the Blackfish for a story. Brynden Tully must have only been a young knight then, freshly battle-seasoned and all Jaime could have wanted to be. And Lysa, he vaguely remembered. She had been seated conspicuously close to him during his first visit there. Addled little Lysa, whose affection he had taken the pleasure to ignore. Later, he had been Riverrun’s prisoner, and later still he had taken it. But before Edmure Tully had become his prisoner, before he had won the Freys' siege and his garrison man had come to him to report the salted old Blackfish had died for his castle, quietly and alone, before all that, he had been freed by Catelyn Stark. _All the poor dead Starks I’ve known to be fools_ , he thought with wistful humor _._ But Catelyn had been a fool he might’ve owed his life, for she had loosed him and handed his chains to Brienne, that peculiar wench who he had come to know and to trust.

To the north and east of the rivers’ joining lay the woods where he and Brienne had been taken by the Bolton men after their capture, and where his hand had been taken, too. Bitterly he watched the current of the Greenfork pull its way around deep bends, its dark pools holding the secretive reflection of the woods within them. Not for the first time, Jaime wondered if things might have been different, had he trusted the woman sooner and not endangered them by baiting her into the fight that exposed them both to their captors. What was there to simper about, though? Nothing could bring his hand back now.

Further north still was Winterfell, where the bastard Snow gathered his forces with the Targaryen girl. He broke for Winterfell to tell them Cersei’s deceit before it was too late. If they would hear him. 

Would they hear him? He did not know, and he did not he entertain much optimistic thought for it. No doubt they would not like his message, nor that he was the one to deliver it. An irony for the ages, the oathbreaker riding hard to keep his promise. The Targaryen upstart would be the first to laugh, as it was her own father’s back he had famously plunged his sword into. _The first to laugh and the first to order me to die. The Snow boy will be the second._ Jaime thought of the first time he had met Jon Snow, the dour-eyed bastard of Winterfell. He had grown into Ned Stark's look, and by his little display of fealty at the Dragonpit he had Ned's damned honor, too. Snow was just as like to condemn him for a story he did not know the full of. But let them kill him, let them all take their turn at it if they must. He would make them hear. This was the battle for the living they faced, and all the hundreds and thousands of yesteryear’s ghosts could not outnumber the needs of those still with blood and hope in them. 

Jaime wound his way along the river, urging his heavy courser on through the far reach of the riverlands. The forested road was quiet; for the past two days he had not encountered a single soul. The silence reminded him a little too much of the hush that came before a summer storm, when long before the men grew wiser the birds and beasts seemed to know to hide themselves away in wait while nature rained her temper down. There would be no summer storm, though, and the same disconcerted spell that rang inside him like a mourner’s pall took hold of him again. If what Jon Snow said was true, this would be a winter whose like no living man had seen nor could remember.

The days were indeed shortening, and nightfall was soon upon him. He would have to stop and rest a while. Jaime steered his horse off the road a ways and lashed her to a young oak before knocking some of the day’s dust and sweat from her with a comb. He had to brace her with the right side of his body, moving the comb roughly with his left hand, but despite feeling some awkwardness in his movement, he had grown stronger, surer. No longer was he a foreigner captive in his own body. He tugged the glove from his left hand and slipped it underneath the mare’s black mane, finding her skin hot and velvet. She let him stay there a while stroking her neck, and he leaned into her, tiredness setting into him like a vague, dense fog.

As he moved about his small camp gathering sticks for a fire, he could not keep his mind from Cersei and the challenge in her eyes as she threatened him with treason, and beneath that, deeper still, he had seen the betrayal of a lover’s trust. He had watched her green eyes flash with challenge so many times before, and he had loved her for it. But she had been like a stranger to him as she reclined there, forbidding him to leave her. And they had betrayed each other so very long ago. Fumbling with cold, Jaime’s good hand brought the flint down hard, and sparks dribbled onto the twigs before catching and flaming up in a relief of fire and smoke. He knelt over it, his woolen black cloak wrapped loosely around him, and he willed himself to think of different eyes that would bring him better company just now, a pair of brilliant blue. _Calm eyes_ , he had thought once. For they had the steadfastness of a summer sky in them, and a warrior’s resolve.

Jaime stretched himself out by the fire, but as it dwindled he found his body curl closer to it, and into darkness he slipped quietly.

 

 

 


	4. Brienne III

Podrick and Brienne began their morning early, before first light. Gently she roused the boy, and together they dressed and made their way downstairs, Brienne sending him off to ready the horses while she asked after some food. A small fire crackled and sputtered in its hearth, and Brienne found Hana the innkeep supervising what must have been her youngest move a fine layer of dust from one side of the room to the other. The cold blue air of dawn seemed to cast its melancholy over the room, the particles stirred by the little girl’s broom shimmering lowly in the light of the fire. Besides the girl and her mother, the inn slept. Brienne had hoped she might encounter the old couple they had met on the road to see if they might have more information to volunteer, but she supposed it was just as well that she and Podrick be on their way. Winterfell was still at least a three-day's ride away, and if they kept their pace, they might even return before Jon’s company arrived by the sea route. 

“Good morning,” she greeted Hana, pacing toward her before the crippled woman could disturb herself.

She made her inquiries after the inn’s storeroom and found without much surprise that the woman was not enthusiastic to part with much given the coming cold. But Brienne did manage to buy a bit of bread and salted beef off her. These she packed away into Podrick’s saddle bag, along with a full purse of water for them to share. The two of them climbed again onto their mares, then, and picked their way back up the hill that would rejoin them with the road.

As morning faded to afternoon and they drew a little nearer to the sea, a stiff wind picked up along the moor, and when Brienne glanced behind her to see how Podrick fared she found him looking chapped and pale with cold.

“Pod,” she called out, “We’ll stop and rest the horses.”

His face lit up with simple relief, and he wrenched back hard on his reins.

Together they rested beside the road, hunching into their fur collars while the horses grazed close by. Brienne passed Pod a bit of beef and half an apple, and they ate awhile in silence, not uncompanionably. As she gnashed her own portion of the leather-hard beef, she considered the boy. _Boy_ , she admonished herself of a sudden, _there’s not much boy left of him_. Podrick had accompanied her across nearly the whole of Westeros, and she had not ever known a man as loyal. Once she had been eager to get rid of her gift squire. She had told him as much, and plainly. But Podrick hadn’t gone. He had only stayed, and grown. _I can’t knight you,_ she had told him, _but I can teach you to fight._ That promise had pleased him, she remembered. She felt her cheeks warm a little with fondness at the memory.

Still, for the past few days she had found him increasingly withdrawn. No doubt her own sulking manner encouraged him—he had seemed to have long grown accustomed to her moods. Though, she knew Podrick to be goodnatured and generally happy, if careful not to chatter in her ear over much. Lately he had been sullen. Brienne felt her brow pinch into its folds. 

“You’re very quiet,” she ventured between swallows.

Pod wiped some froth from the corner of his mouth. “My lady?”

“Quiet,” she said again. She flushed the salty meat from her mouth with a gulp of water, that he had called her lady passing her by without much notice or care. In the time she’d known him, Podrick had often struggled to find a suitable honorific to address her by, shuffling from “ser” to “m’lady” to a hundredfold inchoate combinations of the both. Recently, though, she had caught him favoring lady. The heart had gone out of her to bother correcting or admonishing him, she supposed. Her own awkwardness with the word, too, seemed to had gone as well.

When he met her still with silence, she explained with a short sigh, “You’ve been quiet since we left King’s Landing.”

Podrick regarded her, seeming to await further observation. What she had meant by blurting out the comment, though, was that she worried for him and wanted to know his mind. Despite searching herself, Brienne couldn’t find the words to say as much.

When she said no more, he furrowed his own brow and said, “I get the feeling dark days come.”

She felt herself nod. _Dark days and long nights._ Though she had just drunk from their water purse, her tongue and throat went dry. What was there she could say to that? Podrick was right. They had little reason to accommodate cheer or nicety. Not for the first time since beginning this journey, Brienne felt dumb with silence. She ran her knife along the face of another apple and offered him a section, thinking. But Podrick saved her.

“I’m afraid,” he said to his boots. “Blackwater was the only real battle I fought. I liked to see Bronn and Tyrion again, but I suppose I worry—so many meetings and partings, I fear that I’ll soon see an end.” 

Brienne’s eyes flew up to hold him in her regard. 

“Podrick,” she said, her voice low. In truth she had not seen much battle either, and what they might face she imagined would be worse than any mortal fray. Once she might have wished that she could have perished that eve of the War of the Five Kings, in Renly’s stead. Now, she only wished for life. _Life, and the chance to see the ones I care for, and not fail to keep them._

“It is normal to feel that fear,” she went on. “But you’ll be beside me. Mm? If it comes to it, we’ll fight together.” 

He raised his eyes to hers, and she made herself smile for him. Her faithful squire smiled back.

Late that afternoon, as they kicked their horses along the road at the Neck’s base, the queer moor winds drove a fog over them. Cold, fine mist tasting of the sea fell everywhere around them, and Brienne’s straw hair clung to her head and dripped tiny rivulets down into her brows. She might have worn her helm, but the metal was uncomfortably cold in this weather, and as they went on she misliked more and more that she could scarcely see beyond a few meters of the road and moor around them. It was bright yet, but soon there would be no light at all, only a diffuse, deep darkness. They would have to stop again and decide a place to make their camp. Brienne told herself they would keep the pace a little longer, though, and a little longer yet, all the while Podrick’s words persisting in her thoughts. _All the m_ _eetings and partings…maybe some for the last time._ _Maybe we are only meant to have so many._ But Cersei had given her word to send a southron army to join theirs, and a southron army would fall to Jaime’s command. He would be marching with his forces now, she imagined, many leagues behind, with footmen, archers, riders… 

As she tried to restrain the familiar dread roiling in her, she listened to the repetition of hooves thudding against the ground. One-two-three, one-two-three went her horse and Pod’s. One-two-three- One- three- one-two-four… The sound was bouncing strangely in the fog. Brienne straightened in her saddle a bit and listened harder. One- four- one-two-three. One-two one-two-three. She shifted her reins to one hand, glancing to her left and right. Her ears were deceiving her. Were they? One- two- one-two-three one.

Her heart beat loudly in her throat. Her hand went to the hilt of her sword. “Pod,” she said, too quiet for him to hear.

Then she saw them. A band of men encircled the road, the metal of their swords gleaming at her in the mist.

 

 

 


	5. Jaime II

Jaime peered down at the dingy little hamlet from the summit of the hill. He’d come through Grey Grass only once before, when he was a younger man. It was as he remembered it, though, the same cairn of moor stone marking the turn up from the Kingsroad. He wondered how long those damn stones had balanced there through rain and sleet and sun, through sheep shit and human shit, peacetime and war. Had they stood ten years, or five hundred? More likely five thousand. The place had no right to change and no reason. The world had passed Grey Grass by and would go on forgetting it. _Maybe the army of the dead will lift its nose and march on past, as well._  

But he remembered. He had flown King’s Landing without daring to collect any provisions, and the hard tack, sausage, and leathered fruit he bullied off a homesteader boy leagues away in the Freys’ country had quickly gone. Though down below in Grey Grass there would be an inn with a storeroom that would serve. There was a girl there, too, he vaguely remembered. A pretty brown-haired girl who had all but thrown herself into his bed when he passed through before. The innkeeper’s eldest had been a silly girl, besotted with stories, and he hadn’t given her a moment’s thought when he came to the hamlet all those years ago. He never gave any of the women thought or fancy, those days. All he ever dreamed of was his sister. Cersei’s love and Cersei’s cunt. Jaime’s throat thickened at the thought, and to swallow it he spitefully resolved to find that inn girl. He couldn’t help but smile with a wicked, grim anticipation. How would she like him now, a grizzly old goat with a rotted stump to feel her with in the dark? A mummer, she was like to think him. No, the Kingslayer was wretchedly young, and beautiful…

He kicked his horse to make the descent down the hill trail. As he rode, he watched Grey Grass’ few inhabitants moving about in the fading sun, some of them lighting candles in their windows and others hauling in the last of the day’s work. From behind a hedge at the foot of the tor, he saw an old woman appear, staggering under a towering burden of twigs that swayed in their bundle upon her back. Soundless, timeless, the sun’s final rays caught the stick ends and burnt them red, turning them to fire. Then she went behind a building and disappeared. Perhaps it was not so terrible to be passed by, at the beck of no one’s memory with no pages to record your deeds. Not so terrible, to be a mere mote of ash moving between the years, more a part of nature than a part of man. How had import or glory served him? The burden of the years had always weighed on Jaime’s shoulders, weighed heavier than he could sometimes bear. In a flash, he idly considered not going north to Winterfell at all. What if he simply slipped away, into the wood or across the sea? How long till all memory of the Kingslayer faded? How long till he was as plain and unremarkable as a cairn stone? 

But it was only idle thought. Duty compelled him north, he knew. He rode resigned into the small stable beside the inn, and dismounting he tossed a coin to a rakish boy and bid him to feed and water his horse.

Indoors, a fire glowered lowly, and a child leaned dozing against a broom. Jaime rubbed his gloved hands together to warm them, the metal one fiercely cold against the other.

“Hello?” he called to the otherwise empty hearthroom.

A woman hobbled out from the kitchens then, looking him up and down. “Yes?” she said, her voice more hostile than welcoming. “You’ll be wanting something, ser?”

“A room,” he said. “A meal and some drink, too, if I could have them."

The woman clucked her tongue. “Aye, sure you will.”

She hobbled back the way she came, and Jaime settled down at one of few the tables near the fire, his legs happy for the rest. He itched to remove the damned hunk of metal on his arm that stubbornly held its frigid temperature. He had kept it on of late less for vanity and more out of habit, and he supposed because it served him well enough in a scrapple. But its cold had burned and nagged him through the day, and so sighing he undid its ties and removed the thing glove and all, setting it to rest beside him on the bench. As he set it down on the wood with a muted thud, he felt someone’s eyes fall on him, and when he glanced up he saw the girl who had been leaning on her broom watching him with intense bewilderment. Realizing she’d been caught, the girl startled, her cheeks blazing, and scuttled away. Jaime heard himself laugh roughly. 

The innkeep came limping back with a bowl of mutton and a cup of ale and set the both before him. Her eyes drifted to his missing hand before flashing back up to him. The child must have already reported the great spectacle she’d witnessed by the fire. But the woman had a lame leg, so that made them level, didn’t it? An innkeep and a Kingslayer. _Ah, company,_ Jaime thought. _We merry cripples._

Ignoring her wandering look, he said, “Say, there was a girl here once, perhaps yours, with brown hair and brown eyes.” 

The woman’s own eyes squinted. “My Tilla, you mean? What you want with her?”

Jaime rolled his shoulders lightly. “Perhaps I’m an old friend asking after her.”

“Perhaps you’re nothing,” said the woman. “Tilla’s near five years into the ground.”

Sorry news, even for a stranger who was in his mind no more than a passing reminder of his youth; in all likelihood Tilla had not enjoyed a happy death. Serving women usually didn’t, in war days. Jaime’s fingers troubled the hard stubble at his chin as he thought of a conversation long passed. He and Brienne had been lashed together on a Bolton man’s horse, the true horror of their captivity still to come. As they swayed miserably together, Jaime had warned her, feeling full of knowing, to allow Locke’s men their rape. _It will be worse if you resist them_ , he had said. _Just let them have what they want, and let it be over._ But Brienne had fought, thrashing, and her screams reached him where he sat strapped to a tree, helpless to save her. Screams, terrible screams, he never wished to hear her voice contort to those sounds again. And so he had saved her with a lie. _She’s worth her weight in sapphires_ , he cautioned Locke. And for a lie he’d lost his hand. Not just that, he reminded himself. For his arrogance, and for the terror of men and their desires, he’d lost it.

Nothing he could say could bring back the girl, no more than he could bring back his hand. So too was there nothing that could undo his misdeeds, grown from his own foul desires. He shook his head, though, and all the same he quietly said, “I’m very sorry.”

“Aye,” said the woman, her stare going somewhere far away. She turned to leave, but Jaime cleared his throat.

“I’ll be needing a share of your storeroom for my journey. I’ll pay you handsomely.” 

The woman huffed, the hardness setting back into her voice. “Oh, of course you’ll be. That’s my luck, another knight come to pillage me.”

A light twinkled in Jaime’s eye. “Oh? How terrible, a coin for some cabbage.”

“I don’t have much,” she retorted plainly. “I have my own to look after, I’m not a grocer.”

“Please,” he said. “I _will_ pay.”

He rubbed again at his chin, adding then, “Another knight?” _Who could have come this way?_

The woman brushed her skirts with her hands. “Came through not two days ago. A woman knight.” 

Blood coursed sudden and hot through his ears. “A woman knight?” he said, dumbly. “A knight with cold blue armor, riding with a boy?”

“That’s the one,” she said. “They called her Brienne of Tarth.”

The innkeep left him, and he stared after her, his mind and heart hammering at once with a hundred thoughts and hopes. How had Brienne come this way if she had arrived with Snow’s party? He would have thought she would go with them on their ships and make for Wintefell by the road from White Harbor. Had he been following in her tracks all this time, unknowing, moving across the same road, sleeping under the same cloud? If she had come through here so recently, he must be only a day or so behind. Inwardly Jaime cursed himself for tarrying down to Grey Grass when he could have outridden her by now and found her on the Kingsroad, plodding along with that Payne boy. _Gods, to see her._ She would be stricken no doubt, the poor true Maid of Tarth. He imagined her face, frozen with surprise to see him. She was so easy to cow… That had annoyed him once, but now he only thought of it with fondness and a mirth so stupid it nearly came crashing out from his lungs in maddened laughter. He would not have to waste another moment traveling this dull, forsaken earth without her presence to amuse him.

Jaime stirred from his reverie and glanced about to see where that woman or her little one had gone. He spied the waifish girl lingering by the stair, and he called over to her with a, “Girl!”

She came nervously, withholding some distance.

“Bring your mother, I’ll need those supplies now. And no bed.” Forgetting the spoon beside the stew, he tipped the bowl to his mouth and swallowed most of it in a few sloshing gulps. Jaime set the bowl down, then, and wiped his mouth hurriedly with his right arm.

“Get the stableboy to bring my horse, too. I’m going.”

 

 

 


	6. Brienne IV

Eight men stood before them, two mounted, the other four on foot. Two archers with their bows strung and pointed.

Among their helms and sigils she saw the blazing heart of Stannis Baratheon and the Arryn falcon and crescent. She also saw a black battleax, the Karstark sun, and the flayed man. Their armor was shabby and ill-fitting, their faces drawn and pale.  _They must be deserters from the bastards' battle for Winterfell,_ she thought. It had been a brutal battle, she had seen its aftermath. The carrion was strewn for at least a mile, and dark wings shrouded the sky. Until Snow ordered the bodies mounded together and set to fire. Her right fist tensed against her sword hilt. Behind her, she heard Podrick’s mare startle and rise and crash her hooves down on the frost-hardened road, whinnying a complaint as insistent as the panic Brienne found thudding between her ears. But she was silent, and she stretched out her left arm to signal Podrick to be still.

“Come down, then,” the stoutest one called to her from where he stood on the ground, the point of his longsword flashing up at her in the last of the day's light. “Be quick about it, and you’ll keep your life.”

“And if I decline?” she heard herself say.

A laugh rustled through the men. Brienne stared haughtily down at them, her nostrils flaring.

The stout one didn’t so much as smile, though, as he moved a step closer. “Best you don’t, my lady. It’s your mounts we want, and your steel. We can always take much more.”

A lean man with bulging eyes sneered. "Let me have her, Tibar. I'll take her."

"Hear that?" said the one called Tibar. He spat. "He'll take you, if you refuse to come quietly."

"If you're so sure it's a twat you'll find between those legs," he said askance to the man. 

She only narrowed her eyes. The archers were a difficulty. Her mare fidgeted beneath her as the broken men tightened around them. 

“If it’s a fight you want,” Tibar said, lifting his sword arm.

Brienne swore under her breath, counting the men again.  _Two and four..._ Her heart felt swollen and rock-hard in her chest, as though it, too, had been touched by winter. She had little choice, she knew. Everything waited for her in Winterfell, her life, her oath, perhaps her death _._  She considered again what Podrick had said only hours before, and maybe he had been right about all their recent meetings and partings. Maybe the end had found them already, only they had not seen it, and had not known. She would never see Jaime again, she thought of a sudden. Never thank him, never hold him. Why she should want that, she couldn't know.Perhaps the dream, the dream of the baths. Maybe that was what drove the thought into her mind.  _A memory, not a dream,_ she made herself remember. _I held him once before, and he trusted me._  She imagined his face as she'd seen it last, hard and unyielding and perhaps without love for her. It had been softer when she'd held him, his hair pooling about her arm. No, this was not where she was meant to die, a voice whined somewhere deep within her, this was not how it was meant to end. Not yet. 

"Go on," she addressed Podrick without turning her head. “Dismount.”

She swung down from her horse then, but as she did, she slid Oathkeeper from its hilt, the metal singing as it flowed out into the cold air. She heard Podrick’s feet fall to the ground behind her, the scrape of his own sword scratching her ears. The men laughed again, and this time their leader joined them.

But her sword sprung against his and came lashing back and down upon him again. He stumbled, and she bit her sword into his shoulder, her face catching the hot spurt of blood cleaving out from his neck as he fell beneath her. An arrow flew past her shoulder as she twisted, but she was moving faster, cutting down, swinging fast, and soon the one archer fell beneath her.

Above the pounding of blood and terror in her ears she heard Podrick engage one of the men. But another rushed at her back, and she spun, her sword catching his blade. She howled as she beat at him, swooping hurriedly to her right to evade the reach of a second sword thrust down from above as a mounted man rode through. A man in smoke-black armor and a rusted helm drove at her then, and his sword caught her roughly at the back, shoving her forward. She cried out, slicing low and blind around her. Oathkeeper cut into the ankle of his horse, which tumbled horribly to the earth with a shriek. She heard a strangled scream from behind her.

“Pod!” she cried, “Podrick!”

She plunged her blade into the man with bulging eyes and pushed his weight off her with a straining kick of her boot. She was glancing around for Podrick when a dagger flashed up and met her throat, scorching into her skin and splitting it open there. She screamed, ramming Oathkeeper down and down and down again onto the arm that held the knife until the ground rose up to meet her and the arm and dagger both fell into her lap. Bringing a gloved hand stammering to her neck, she found a torrent there running black and hot down her gorget and breast. She looked up from her fingers, and the world swayed before her, its edges fraying out into a nothingness. A million leagues on, she saw her squire struggling against a bigger man, his feet nearly out from under him, when of a sudden a sharp, singing whistle sliced through the air and shot through the deserter. Blood sprayed red from the man’s eye, and Pod fell back, shouting. Two more arrows flew through the mist and caught the man in smoke-black armor. Another shot across her vision, and Brienne blinked.

An eon passed. The world pitched on its side. She blinked again, a bright, small face appearing over her, its mouth moving beneath a beard. Then there were three small faces, this time none looking at her. She blinked, she blinked again. A finger outstretched and pointing, warning. Voices in the mist. She could not keep her eyes open, so she closed them, and she fell into an abrupt and total darkness.

Faintly, a lifetime away, she heard Jaime call her name.

 

 


	7. Jaime III

Through the dense fog that hung about the moorland, above the sound of his courser’s hoof beats finding the path beneath them, Jaime heard strange metal voices carrying in the distance. They clashed and bounded and sprang in the air, and he knew them at once to be the sounds of a struggle. But the sun had fallen, and mist weighed sleepily over the ground. He could scarcely see beyond the tips of his mare's black ears. Like a blind man, he kicked them forward into the growing darkness, his thoughts rushing about him like the many currents of the sea.

As the clash grew louder, he felt sure he rode into a battle with a hundred men, but from the mist the lone shadow of a man at last appeared, a small, dark shape that feebly staggered out and then sank down dead in the path. A piebald horse ran nickering from the struggle, disappearing past Jaime into the dark. More men appeared from the fog as he came upon them, and Jaime pulled his horse back at the edge of the fray, frantically searching the shapes for the one he knew and dreaded to find. A voice shrieked, and more men fell in a confusion of blades and limbs, and three green-fletched arrows flew from the nothingness around them and seared into their targets, dropping the last remaining attackers to the ground.

He swept a panicked glance again over the bodies and then saw her there, pale as a wraith and kneeling in the midst of all the death that surrounded her, a wet mask of blood dribbling over her mouth and chest.  _Hers,_  he thought hurriedly,  _hers, or another’s?_  The goddamn woman, had she gotten herself killed before he could reach her? His stomach lurched into his throat; he had to fight the bile down.

The mist blew over three small men standing at the other end of where the fight had been. Two of them still held their bows drawn, the tallest of the three moving soundlessly over to where she knelt staring at her bloodied glove. The whites of her eyes flashed once before she crashed to the ground, her armor creaking with an icy sound.

“Brienne,” he shouted, leaping down from his saddle. Something stung his eyes.

“Stop there,” said the tallest man, his finger pointing in accusal.

Jaime stumbled to a halt before shaking himself and moving forward another step, his sword half drawn. “She needs healing,” he growled.  _If she's alive._  “I’ll cut you down if you don’t step away from her.”

“She’ll have healing,” the man said. He motioned to his companions, and they fell in beside him. One of the lithe little men stooped to feel the wound on Brienne’s neck before digging into a pouch at his belt and drawing out a bit of cloth which he pressed into the gash.

Jaime stared at the group of them. They were small enough to be Joff’s age, maybe, before he’d died, but the leader wore the beard and wrinkles of a grown man aged enough to be as old as Tywin, and the other two were similarly mature in the face. In the barest light remaining, Jaime saw they had no armor. Instead they wore simple clothes the color of swamp moss that were edged with fur and netting, and their bows were a queer silver, made from slim, spry wood that looked as pale as weirwood.

“Crannogmen?” Jaime heard himself say aloud, disbelieving.

When he was younger, he had heard his cousins and older boys talk about the peculiar men who lived in the swamps of the Neck, men who sneaked about in the night and stole children from their cradles, who had laughs deep and old as mud and faces like sun-cracked soil. They knew every bog and rut of the Barrowlands, and they could disappear when you turned your back, retreating craven to their moving castle, never to be found. He had heard them called frogeaters, mudmen, bogdevils. He had thought those all were stories, albeit dark ones, passed from boy to boy.

A little ways beyond them, someone stirred, moaning. Jaime squinted. It would be Podrick. “Are you hurt?” Jaime called.

The boy was sitting on his ass, cradling his arm.

“I think—” Podrick began, his voice strained. He felt along the offending arm. “No. No, I’ll be all right.”

He paused and then said dumbly, “Ser Jaime?”

Jaime ignored him. He drew his sword in his left hand and hefted its tip at the one he supposed was their leader.

The small man smiled, his teeth flashing briefly behind the hairs of his mustache. “Ser Jaime Lannister, is it? Put down your sword, you won’t need it, unless you’d like to lose your life.”

One of the others crooked an arrow back. The string croaked obediently.

The man crouched down and regarded Brienne, nodding to the other who knelt beside him. Removing the little bit of cloth that had been pressed to her wound, he brought a handful of dry herbs out of his belt and broke them in his palm before rubbing the mixture into her neck where blood still ran in thick streams.  _Too much blood_ , thought Jaime. And his cousins had said the crannogmen tipped their arrowheads with poison. Was this poison they rubbed into her wound? He started forward, but the archer pulled his arm back further in warning, and Jaime stilled. The two men lifted her head and bound a bandage around her throat with nimble hands.

“Who  _are_  you?”

Their leader looked up at Jaime, bemused. “I’d’ve thought you might have strung it together on your own,” he said. “But then that would be your brother. I’ve heard he has a fast wit.”

The man straightened and wiped his hand on his leg before he offered simply: “Howland Reed.”

 

 


	8. Jaime IV

He bore no sigil to declare himself, nor did he elaborate any further beyond the mere offering of his name. The man only regarded Jaime then, a queer and wondering silence growing between them. A low wind shifted across the ground, tousling the white hairs where Brienne’s head lay sleeping. Jaime stared back at the man, considering. Beneath a serious, drooping brow, he had laughing eyes, eyes that in the dark of the moor looked to Jaime like two glass pools, shallow and flashing like a shadowcat’s meeting torchlight.

Jaime might have said that it was impossible, that he could not be who he claimed. Howland Reed had engaged in the confused aftermath of Robert’s Rebellion, choosing to ride south with Ned Stark and his men to seek out Robert’s bride, the vanished Lyanna Stark. After that, there had been no further word spoken of the crannog lord, not that Jaime recalled. There would have been no reason to speak of him--the man was dead.

Jaime remembered the day Ned returned from his errand in Dorne. The northman had come back to the Keep friendless and ashen-faced, and as he walked the empty hall to where young Robert Baratheon paced before the throne, his footfall had carried in long echoes. That was what Jaime remembered as he thought back now on that day: the quiet of the hall, and the solemn Eddard Stark, who had come to them alone, without his men or sister. But perhaps Ned had been smarter than he had ever let on. Perhaps he had been hiding some part of the truth of whatever had happened in Dorne, when he and his men had clashed with the last of the Targaryen guard. Whatever reason he might have had to do so, though, Jaime could not begin to fathom. Why tell Robert and Jon Arryn, the closest men Stark could claim next to his kin, that everyone had perished? Why lead them to believe the crannog lord Reed, insignificant though he was, to be dead? Why protect him? Why _hide_ him? Jaime’s thoughts knotted, and he found he could not undo the snarl.

“I don't have the muscle to carry your companion,” Howland said at last, gesturing to where Brienne’s body still slumped unmoving against the ground. “Get her onto your horse, and come.”

Reed turned his back to Jaime then, and his man relaxed his bow, slipping it over his narrow chest. The other stooped over Podrick and helped the squire to his feet. All three crannogmen seemed to be readying to leave. Jaime stared after them, trying to take the slack out of his jaw.

“Why should I follow the likes of you,” Jaime managed through his shock, but whatever malice he had hoped would carry across was absent. He instead heard his words come as his thoughts had been, halting and confused. The crannog lord turned back to glance at Jaime.

“Would you prefer that I killed you?” asked the man with a curiosity that seemed almost sad. “That I leave your friend knight to die?”

When he answered only with more silence, Reed shook his head. Again, he said, “Come. I recommend you do.”

Before Jaime could think to respond, the men began to move off into the fog. Jaime swore beneath his breath and went to Brienne, his good hand feeling over her face and throat. The bleeding had been stopped, at least. And softly, feebly, a pulse responded under his touch.

“Podrick,” he called, rocking back on his heels. “To me. Bring my horse, and help me lift her.”

Podrick came with the black mare, and together they fitted their hands under the woman’s arms. Podrick stared across Brienne at Jaime, his eyes wide in the darkness. _Afraid_ , _afraid like you_. But together they lifted her to her feet and, the both of them grunting with effort, managed to get her onto the mare’s back. “Hold her, Podrick, hold her steady,” Jaime commanded, and he jumped astride the horse, bracing Brienne’s body against the mare’s neck. The other horses had run off in the confusion, but Podrick came leading the reins of one that had remained near by. _Brienne’s_. The younger man looked to Jaime, his face upturned in the mist.

“What will we do?”

“We’ll go,” he said. “They don’t seem to want to hurt us.” _Bugger if I knew why._ Jaime looked past his nose to Brienne’s body slumped close between him and the horse, and for a moment he was tempted to move his hand through her pale, short hair. “And she’ll need a maester. Maybe they’ll have one in whatever hedge they’re taking us to. Take her horse, ride close behind me. And keep awake.”

Jaime kicked his horse, then, starting her walking in the direction the crannogmen had gone. He came upon them soon enough, though he supposed that might have only been owed to the fact they were allowing themselves to be found. They moved through the heather and moor grass one after another in a line and said nothing to each other or to Jaime, so he said nothing in return, keeping his horse in their footsteps, holding Brienne propped close against his chest.

He could feel the cold of her armor through her cloak, and it made him shudder. With some shame, he remembered again when they had been captured by the Bolton men. They had lashed her tightly to him to steady him in the saddle, some days tying them front to front, with his rotting hand pressed between them. He’d smelled of death and worse, but she had never once joked or complained, his poor, serious Brienne of Tarth. Nor had she mocked him once they had taken his hand from him, and with his hand, all that he might have called his life. _What are you doing,_ she had said to him one night, softly, above the murmur of a fire. _Dying,_ he said. And he was. He would. But she had said no, _No, you must live._ Somehow, that had been enough.

_Brienne, you great, meddlesome oaf,_ he thought, shifting her weight on his arm, _do not leave me alone now. Not now, when I have you._ A strange thought, strange in its simplicity. The quiet peacefulness of that took hold of him, and he gripped her a little tighter.

There was a gradual dip in the moor, and Reed called to them.

“Careful afoot.”

Jaime knew they would be far off the King’s Road now, deep into bog country. The night air felt almost warm here, full with brackish salt and the stink of mud. A mist still fell heavy around them, its dew clinging to his hair and clothes and skin. It was a wonder to Jaime the little men could know at all where they led.

As if interrupting his thoughts, the grass fell away all of a sudden to thick, squelching mud, and all around him sang the throaty voices of swamp frogs and grasswings. Before he saw it, he heard it: a light lapping of water at a shore. He squinted, and several small lights swam out of the darkness, one then another and another, to squirm and dance in the thick air before him. 

“What is this place?” he said. He heard a loud creak of wood and the dip of oars.

Reed turned to him, a smile moving beneath his wiry beard.

“Greywater Watch, Ser Jaime,” he said. “Welcome.”

He nearly laughed, but from the dark and the fog emerged a fortress of stone and wood and moss, its towers staggering out of a deep black pool, and lights shining from its many windows and doors.

 

 


	9. Jaime V

Out from the cane grass and cattail came a great wooden barge, her prow sliding close to the bank and then resting there. Ripples drove darkly at their feet.

“Kerill, Tigg, lead their horses,” said Howland Reed, and his two men moved in around them to guide the horses onto the barge. 

The boat sagged and the oarsmen pushed away, bringing them deeper into the marsh. As they drew nearer to the fortress of Greywater Watch, oily torchlight from the lamps shone across Reed’s face. He had an amicable look, Jaime thought, with a sort of wry set to his cheeks and eyes, a mouth that seemed to laugh even when stilled, and salty hair that lay in a rumpled fringe across his brow. Whether he could be trusted, though, remained to be seen. No man or woman that he had known had ever glimpsed the crannog castle, much less been taken into its halls. _What were you hiding in this man, Ned? And why does he help us? What does he stand to gain?_

The oarsmen steered them soundlessly into a jetty which glimmered with twenty-odd footlamps, and a line of men ran along it to receive the barge, each carrying a torch of their own. In the dark and the fog, the entire dock bobbed with light, and it gave Jaime the impression of a dream he might have had as a very young boy, a dream of some queer, twinkling world that did not belong to men. The barge creaked as it caught the jetty, and Kerill and Tigg led them off and down the pier to the fortress door, which had no gate but looked to be made of stone ornamented with carvings that Jaime could not make out in the flickering light.

Howland strode ahead of them, motioning to Kerill as they passed under the door. “Get Erwin. The north room.”

The man nodded, passing Jaime’s lead to Tigg before he went. More men appeared in the fortress yard and crowded around Jaime and Brienne.

“Can you support her on your arm?” the crannoglord asked. Without waiting for a reply, he directed the men, “Help her down.” 

But Podrick had dropped down from his horse and was there beneath Jaime in an instant, his arms outstretched to guide her from the saddle. Jaime dismounted as well, and together he and Podrick pulled her down to slouch between either of their arms. 

“This way,” Howland said. “After me.”

The fortress was large and well-lit, with many narrow, winding halls; they must have passed down three halls before climbing a short stair to what Jaime supposed was the north wing. Tapestries hung from the walls, and when the group of them hurried past, their torchlight flickered over the hangings, revealing their illustrations before they fell quickly again into shadow. They depicted neither house arms nor battles, common subjects for such decoration, but instead showed complex compositions of oaks, fir, fish, and game whose threads glittered as they passed.

“Not the dungeon for us, is it then?” said Jaime from under Brienne’s weight, his breath short.

In answer, Howland steered them into a room with a crackling fire and a handsome bed hewn from the same carved stone from the great door. A thin, stooped man waited there with his back to the hearth. Jaime and Podrick lay Brienne onto the bed, and the old man crossed over to them. 

“Her neck, Erwin,” Howland said simply. 

Erwin knocked his tongue and nodded, and glancing once at Brienne before turning to Jaime and Podrick.

“Get her out of the gorget and breastplate, if you would,” the old man said in a rough, low voice that reminded Jaime of the groaning of trees in a cold wind.

The squire went to work, his hands moving deftly over the buckles and straps, but Jaime hesitated a moment, an awkwardness coming over him. He dismissed the unintelligible notions that wavered questioningly like little minnows at the edge of his mind, though, and he moved to help Podrick lift the pauldrons at her shoulders before undoing the breastplate and gorget. They took away her vambraces and gloves as well. When they set the armor aside, the old man, Erwin, touched the bandage at her neck experimentally. He wore no chains about his own neck.

“A maester,” Jaime heard himself say. “He’s not a maester.”

“No,” Howland Reed said. Jaime glanced over at him and found his eyes laughing again with the same sad mirth he’d noticed there before. “He’s not a maester. But he is a healer, and as clever with his craft as any man sent from the Citadel.”

“A hedge witch? Can that be safe?” Podrick asked Jaime in an urgent voice.

Reed smiled and shook his head. “He is a Greenhand, not a hedge witch,” he explained. “A family that has served our people since before the Andals came to Westeros. They follow the old ways: Erwin Greenhands knows every weed and flower in the Neck and North, and with them can bring down any fever, and knit shut any wound. I’ve seen him chase out illness and death alike. You need not worry for your friend, she’ll have the care she needs.”

While Reed spoke, Erwin Greenhands had fetched a bowl of water and some fresh cloth, and with these in hand he unwound the bandage at her neck. He held out the blood-stained dressing.

“Into the fire, ser,” he said in his warbling voice.

When Jaime did not move, Podrick took the cloth and walked it to the hearth. He tossed it into the flames, which hissed and sputtered and smoked. Jaime watched only Brienne, whose chest rose and fell shallowly in her leather doublet. Her neck was dark with blood. Jaime’s own chest pinched tightly and was sore. He felt his breath come in short, troubled draughts. Erwin sopped at the excess blood, revealing beneath it an angry gash that cut deep into muscle. Once the wound had been cleaned of the herbs Reed had administered there before to stopper the bleeding, he held out the bit of cloth he had used.

“Fire,” he said, and Podrick again took it and cast it into the small blaze.

Erwin then drew a dropper from a belt he wore across his chest and with it dribbled some mixture onto her wound. Jaime thought he saw her face twist in a grimace, but if he had, it was quickly gone. Also from the belt Erwin Greenhands took a small purse, removing a fine, long needle and a spool of thread. With nimble fingers he made fast work of stitching the gash closed. It must have been as long a cut as the width of Jaime’s left hand, but at last it was shut. The healer spread a bit of poultice over the stitching, then he moved away from her, wiping his hands on some fabric that hung over his shoulder.

He addressed the crannoglord. “She will heal well. But she’ll have some pain.” 

“Thank you, Erwin,” said Howland. The healer gave another soft cluck of his tongue before going to leave.

“Give her some milk of the poppy,” said Jaime hurriedly as the slim old man went. “For when she wakes.”

The healer looked to Howland before meeting Jaime’s eyes. Like the other crannogmen, Erwin Greenhands was short in stature, but he seemed to stand a little taller than them, or he might have were it not for the slight stoop in his back. He had a kindly face, with closely cropped white hair and deep-set wrinkles around his mouth and eyes.

“She’ll heal better without it,” Erwin said, an apologetic air hanging in his voice. “There are other things for the pain. When she wakes, I’ll bring them.”

Reed nodded then, and the healer left them. Podrick sank down onto a slender chair. Firelight gleamed across the stone floor. It was warm in the room, but abruptly Jaime became aware he was soaked cold with sweat and mist from the moors. 

“Why do this,” he said. Past the edge of unease that lingered still, he could feel tiredness creep in, too. 

“Why help you?” asked Howland.

Jaime scoffed, though it came more out of disbelief than spite. “You expect me to believe you and your men often range over the kingsroad to interfere between brigands and knights?” When Howland only regarded him with silence, Jaime went on, “You’re a secretive people. I don’t believe my own father ever knew you. Why bring us here?”

A faint sadness passed over the man’s features. _What does he have to feel sorrow for?_

“If I knew, if I knew truly, I might tell you,” said Howland Reed. “But I can only tell you what has been seen. And I doubt you’ll hear me just now.” 

What has been seen, but not what is known? What in the rat’s arse could he riddling at? Jaime felt himself frown.

“There is a room adjoined to this one,” Howland said. “You and your man may stay there, though I suggest one of you will want to watch her through the night. Call for Erwin when she wakes.”

The crannoglord left, then, and in his absence a silence lingered that threatened to close over Jaime.  
  
“Podrick,” he made himself say. “Go to sleep a while, I’ll watch.”

“Ser Jaime,” he said, rising slowly from his chair. He didn’t seem to want to leave them, though, as he made no progress to cross into the next room.

“Go,” Jaime said again, his tone tightening. But he knew, he knew it then, the young man must have loved her. That the squire could be so devoted to Brienne, that he could know her worth as plain as Jaime did, as Jaime had known it for a long time, perhaps ever since he'd first been forced into her company on their journey back to King's Landing—this occurred to him with a faraway kind of pride. Softening, he said, “It’s all right.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry everyone for the delay--I had hoped to get this chapter out during the weekend, but school and work kept me too busy. Why I'm trying to write this story and finish a masters degree is beyond me. :)
> 
> Thank you again for all of your support and interest, it really means a lot to me. 
> 
> The following chapter should be out later this week.
> 
> x tru


	10. Jaime VI

After Podrick had gone, he went to her, though his arms hung awkward at his sides, and despite their being alone, his spine felt tight and unmovable as a rod, and he could barely stand to look on her. Brienne hadn’t a care, though. She dreamt undisturbed, her eyelashes laying white and solemn as snow against her fair cheeks, and her limbs were heavy and still on the downy featherbed.

He might have stood over her an hour, an hour or a century. The fire soon burned low, and he made himself stir at last, his hand and stump maneuvering clumsily over the fastenings at her belt and greaves. _She’ll be more comfortable out of the rest._ He carried her sword belt and the remaining armor to the other side of the room where her things had been hastily discarded during the healer’s mending, and he lay Oathkeeper at the foot of the pile. Its gold hilt glistened darkly in the firelight.

He thought with some irony of his father, who had wanted the sword for him, and how he had defied Tywin even in this. But he had not done it only to spite his father's wishes. He had wanted it for _her_ , that she should carry it for a truer purpose. Of course, she had tried, once, to return the Valyrian sword. A slight smile twitched at his mouth to think of that. How serious she had been, holding that hilt to him, the red cast of his war tent glowing mad around her. He had almost not known whether to laugh or to feel some sort of sorrow that she had understood neither the longevity of his gift nor all that he felt bound them together. Brienne had not the greatest wit for subtlety, he knew, her effort to return the gift was only greater emphasis of that fact. Still, he wondered errantly why she had done it, why she had even tried to return the blade. She was stubborn, worse than any other he knew, but there was more in it that that, there had to have been. Jaime threw another log onto the fire and crouched before it, breathing a few times into its heart.

The fire smoked and stirred and was warm on his face. He shut his eyes a moment and tried, too, to shut out the little bit of hurt he found within him, but he nevertheless saw her in his mind’s eye as she was that day in the tent with Oathkeeper offered between them, her pale eyes full of fear, and her jaw held sternly. _What did she not understand?_ he thought now, a bitterness rising in his throat. _What was there that keeps her doubting, after everything?_ In his memory, he watched her turn to leave him, disappearing into the Lannister encampment in a cold, white blur.

So many damned goodbyes, one after another it seemed to him of a sudden—an entire endless chain they hadn’t yet found a way to break, as duty carried them this way or that but kept them returning always at the heels of their sworn houses. When he had seen her last before in the ruined bowels of the Dragon Pit, Brienne had all but shouted at him, _Fuck_ loyalty _,_ and her stare had been wild and accusing, her eyes driving into him like steel. He ought to have laughed then and accepted her completely, for she had been right, after all. He had watched Ned’s son kneel to the daughter their fathers helped overthrow, and Cersei had betrayed them all. Houses and oaths and all the pages of history itself didn’t matter now, all that remained was the battle for the living, and they had desperately to live; Brienne had seen that, he hadn’t. And so he had let her go from him, and this time she had nearly left him for keeps. An icy fervor seized Jaime, and he stalked over to her bedside where she lay.

“Brienne, gods damn you,” he spat, and he might have gone on. He might have told her she was a great thundering idiot for scrapping with half a dozen men and for _losing_ , he might have said how furious he would have been had she died pathetically on some moor when he was half a step away, he might have cursed her again up and down a thousand times over. But the fire’s last glow languished deep shadows over her face, and while he gazed down at her all the anger he had for her spoilt and turned inward.

While he hesitated there still at her side, he watched her eyes shift beneath their lids as they chased the shadows of a dream, and her mouth twisted fitfully, then, in discomfort or in fear. He passed his missing hand over her brow and hair, the skin at the stump of his wrist not quite brushing her but feeling for the little bit of heat rising up off of her. It occurred to him, not for the first, that she was nearly beautiful. Some other heat within him stirred at that, and he drew the blankets up over her before crossing back to the fire, where he sank down and fell into a frayed and shallow sleep.

 

 


	11. Brienne V

She awoke burning. First, the sting at her throat pulled her gradually and groggily from the depth of sleep to rock her just at the world’s black edge, but slowly she felt herself slip off it, and from it she fell into a searing, insistent pain, one she no longer could evade. Brienne shifted her head where it lay, blinking her eyes open to try to find the cut, but when she moved the pain leapt up along her neck in taut, fine lances, and she heard herself cry out in the darkness. Then there were voices that answered her, voices that murmured over her and her moans. A flame licked at the side of her neck, up her throat and insides. _I’m on fire,_ she wanted to say. A hand passed over her and pressed itself to her forehead. _I’m bleeding, I’ll die._ But something cool was wrung out over her, and she was quenched, and she fell again into blackness.

For an eternity, it felt, she drifted in and out of a dreamless sleep, kept only at its seam. When she at last awoke again, though, the pain was less, and she found herself alone in a shadowed room, with the weight of blankets and furs piled down on top of her. On the other side of the room, a small fire crackled and clung on to a last bit of coal, and when she turned her head with some caution she saw there was a broad window, but she could not make out what lay beyond it. Past its many dark and glossy panes, a vague gloom rippled out into a sky that had no sun or hour.

She was not dead, then. Nor dying. But how she had come to this place, she did not know. Brienne drew a tired hand up through the blankets and brushed her fingertips along her chest and and throat, finding a bandage where before she distantly recalled there had been blood, a hot, dark stream of it. The horror of the scene came back to her slowly and in waves: there had been the melee on the moor, and Podrick’s cry, and her turning to find him only to meet a dagger’s gleam flashing up through the mist. Then there was the hand she had hacked from the blade which fell heavy into her lap. The beat of blood in her ears, and the ground rising up to meet her. After that, though, she remembered nothing. A little voice far, far outside herself reasoned then that Podrick must have fallen, for she had not saved him. But why she hadn’t died, she found she did not understand. Had she failed at that, too? Brienne tugged the covers to her chin and shut her eyes, a deep ocean of fatigue swelling up to wash her under. She did not wish to see this world. She did not wish to know it. 

It was some time later that she opened her eyes once more. The fire had gone out, and a cold, grey light had come over the room. It was perhaps a little past dawn. Her every limb and muscle ached, and a bright hot pain still sang along her throat, so she stayed where she was. There was no use moving, no use getting up. Brienne pulled the coverlet a little higher, nearly to her cheeks. A single tear stung down her nose and melted into the blanket’s fur edging. She might have felt shame, shame for failing Podrick, for being dragged to some castellan’s mercy, for not being the warrior she ought to be by rights. She might have, had grief not already swallowed her.

But in the corner of the room, a shadow stirred, and a pair of eyes clapped upon her.

_Jaime._

Brienne parted her lips to make a sound, but her tongue was woolen and dead inside her mouth, and anyway she did not know what she could say. In her absence of speech, she remembered the dream of the baths, where she had waited for him in terrible darkness. Deliriously, she thought,  _You came._

He moved to the bedside, and she felt herself frown. He was dressed in black wool and leather, not the brilliant gold and crimson suit of Lannister armor she had last seen him wear. Even more incongruously, he was here, wherever here was.

“You’re awake,” he observed, as though to someone else. “Good.”

Brienne’s eyes shifted over the room once more, but she found them alone in the low light of morning.

“Here, drink.”

Jaime held out a chalice, and she tried to push back on her elbows to sit up and accept it, but she must have moved wrong because the wound pulled, and she winced, hissing out a lungful of air between her teeth.

“Ah,” he said, an awkward sound from a Lannister. He moved to reposition a pillow behind her back.

As she leaned experimentally onto the pillow, the coverlet dropped down to her chest. Someone had undone her armor, she realized. A maid? Jaime? A lazy heat ran to her cheeks, and she reached for the chalice and drank its water quickly, to wake herself.

“How?” she said, her voice thick and slow. She handed the chalice back. 

“I could ask you the same,” he replied. “How is it you still fight with so much honor you don’t see a bloody knife coming at your throat?” 

Brienne recoiled at that. Her stare fell to her hands, which wrested the thick blankets at her lap. Had she the will, she might have quipped back at him, but the threat of more tears pricked at the corner her of eyes, and she could think of little defense, her mind echoing as empty as the sky.

“Well, you’ll need to improve, and improve quickly,” he babbled, an edge in his voice. “I have to say, Brienne, I didn’t assume to find you with the anticipation that I’d have to whip you on a training ground before the next Long Night.”

She scowled, but said nothing, turning her gaze now to the window. Was it sky beyond those panes, she thought distantly, sky or water?

A soft rap came then at the door, and a man let himself in without an answer. Jaime seemed to know him, because as the man moved toward them Jaime stepped away from her bedside and dropped wearily into a chair. She peered at him. The man was of an older age, but slight and small of stature, and he wore a leather sash over his chest from which several pouches and knots and parcels hung. As he drew nearer, an earthy, blooming scent erupted in her nostrils. It was a scent of spring and healing. 

She opened her mouth to form some question, perhaps to ask him who he was, and _where_ she was, but he raised a long-fingered hand to stop her.

“You’ve slept long. I’ll change your dressing,” he said.

While he worked at her wound, she watched him, holding her face still as she could when he pulled away the spent cloth and brushed a fatty salve onto the cut. Still, she could not help but grimace when he pressed the bit of fresh dressing against her neck and wound some scrap to hold it.

“You said you’d have something more for the pain,” said Jaime from where he sat at the hearth.

The man straightened and regarded Jaime a moment, then wiped his hands on a cloth that draped beneath his leather sash.

“Yes, she’s had gillywort already, which has helped her color,” he said approvingly. He reached into a dainty pouch that hung just above his heart and withdrew several small, waxen leaves of a deep green color in the pinch of his fingers. “Here. Take this between your teeth, and chew.”

She opened her palm for him to drop the leaves into, then took one and broke it in her teeth. A pleasantly cool taste filled her mouth.

He nodded. To Jaime, he said, “I’ll have some food sent to break your fast. Unless you’d like to join the lord this morning?”

“No,” said Jaime.

The man went, the door complaining on its hinges as it shut.

Silence met them like a wall.

“Jaime,” she ventured. Her voice sounded feeble, more than she would have liked.

He looked up from his lap. When his eyes found hers, she felt her stomach toss in that same disbelief as before—how was it that he was here, with her? _And why must he see me like this,_ she thought with a pain worse than the cut. But it seemed he was done firing his jeers at her, because he only stared, his face open, waiting. His eyes, normally bright with challenge, in this light were flat, grey pools. She had seen him like that before, and not just once. _He is sad._  But there was more amiss than her health, she felt it with a sudden and sharp certainty.

“Where is your army?”

 

 


	12. Brienne VI

“Where is your army?” she had asked, because as her thoughts came out of their thaw and the world pulled slowly back to its foundations, it occurred to her that it was not only strange for Jaime to be at her bedside, but for him to have already made so much ground. Armies took time to ready and to march. Had she been asleep a week, two?

Brienne watched as Jaime’s face shifted but did not betray an answer. From across the room, his eyes were dark and difficult to read. 

He seemed to think a while, but he said at last in a guarded tone, “I’m here without them.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?” 

“I’ll tell you,” he said, his voice still firm, before he threw a pointed glance around the room. 

She took his meaning. Wherever they were, perhaps the walls would not safely hold what information Jaime had for her. She sank her head back into the feather pillow. There was plenty she wanted to know, plenty she did not have an answer for, but she suspected he would not be open with her, not until they met with this lord the healer had mentioned. Wearily, she searched for something to say in the meantime, something innocent about their circumstances which she could perhaps learn.

“Podrick?” she asked because she doubted it could be any harm, though even to say his name drove a sword into her stomach. She tried to remain composed as she specified flatly, “His body?”

Jaime’s brow fell into a knot. “His body?” 

“Never mind,” she said, turning her neck before she remembered the wound and grimaced at the sting. He likely did not know anything about the squire’s death or his whereabouts. It had been hopeful to even ask after him.

“Brienne, do you think he died?”

Her eyes flashed up again to meet his, and she found him regarding her like he had before, with a soft, open sort of expression. A look she’d seen several times but still trembled to recognize; he had worn it when they had parted under the sea pines outside the Red Keep, and she had told him the name she had decided for the sword. Oathkeeper, she had said as the pines' canopy moved liked liquid gold above them. She had thought of it in the night while she had lain awake in the small, lofted room that leaned out over Blackwater Bay. She couldn’t bear to see that look again now. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she tried to find her breath and steady it.

“He’s alive,” she heard him say, softly. 

She kept her eyes shut. The grey light of the air outside swayed before her eyelids.

“Alive?” said Brienne.

“Yes,” said Jaime. “I sent him off to see to the horses and learn what he could about this place.”

It was too much to comprehend. Her mind swam, dogged to find the sense of it. She must have lost consciousness when she’d been cut, and Podrick had saved them and brought them to this castle. But that still did not answer where they had come to nor how Jaime had found them.

“This place?” she asked, daring to open her eyes to see him.

But a serving boy came through the door just then, his arms laden with a tray spilling with berries and soft cracked rolls and cheese and a pitcher of watered ale. These he set down along with two wooden chalices on the modest table beside the window before turning to slip quietly from the room. 

“Where are we?” she said. She heard the exasperation as it crept into her voice. “Can I know that, at least?”

Jaime’s lips twitched nearly to a smile. “Greywater Watch, I’m told.”

She blinked.

“Of House Reed?” 

He gave a tip of his head.

“But that’s impossible.”

Jaime stood from his perch and crossed to the plate of food, plucking up a few berries and tossing them into his mouth before flushing them down with some of the ale. He set the chalice down and met her astonished look with a true flourish of a smile.

“Jaime, they say—”

“That the crannogmen are cowards with cupboards full of poison.” He lifted the cup to her and drank again from it. “If the Reeds wanted us dead, they’ve gone through a terrible amount of trouble to forestall it. Your death especially.”

She thought a moment. “The men I saw.”

Their faces had appeared above her on the moor. Queer faces, small somehow. She remembered now. They had come at the end of the attack, though she failed still to understand why or how. She scarcely believed she had seen them at all. But she would have to believe it, if she was to climb out of this bed and get her footing. If they had come to the bogs where the crannogment were said to live, that meant they had made it as far as the land south of the barrowlands, near Moat Cailin. Winterfell was close. 

Jaime handed her a plate with some cheese and bread and a cluster of dark little berries that shone like purple jewels. “Here, eat.”

She took it, balancing the plate hesitantly on her lap. A restless feeling came over her which stymied her appetite and made her forget her thirst. If Podrick was alive, she wanted to see him and speak with him. And if this Lord Reed was at home, they would have to speak with him as well. _Why did Jaime decline to breakfast with him?_ she thought with a twitch of annoyance. _We should have spoken with him right away._ But, more truthfully, she knew that in Jaime’s presence she felt dumb with the weight of silence and all the many questions buried deeper within her that she both wished to ask and was frightened to hear answered. Searching for something else to say, she looked to the window behind where he stood. Pale water rippled out without a shore; so what she had thought to be sky had indeed been some kind of river or sea. She had heard once as a girl that the crannogmen had a magic castle that they could make disappear beneath the bog and reeds when they wanted. Some said their women lured men down into the drowned halls. A childish superstition, but Brienne found herself wondering whether any of it could be true, if they had indeed come to the vanishing fortress of Greywater Watch. 

“How long have I slept?” she asked.

“A night, Brienne, not much more.”

She pushed the plate of food off her lap onto the blankets beside her and slid her legs gingerly to the featherbed’s edge.  
  
“Which means you’re still healing.”

She disregarded him, feeling the cold stone floor with her feet. The coverlet fell from her, and she stood with some care. Her wound pulled a little as she straightened her back, but the pain was manageable. The ground swayed a little, though, and she felt her vision prickle. Jaime swept close to her, his arms coming up to hover at her sides.

He wasn’t wearing the golden hand, she noticed. She held up her own hands and stepped away from him. 

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

The door creaked open once more, and both of them stopped to stare as Podrick came into the room. He wore a sling around his neck, his right arm cradled to his chest.

“Lady Brienne,” he said, and he crossed the room to them. For a moment Brienne thought he might embrace her, but he stopped short of where she stood. 

“Podrick,” she said, her voice low. “Are you well?”

The young man smiled. “I am.” He looked down at his arm, and then said, “Oh, it’s a sprain.”

“Pod tells me you saved his life,” Jaime said. He did not lift his eyes from the squire.

She swallowed thickly. _I did not_ , she might have said. _I nearly died trying._ As her charge it was her duty to protect him, and beyond duty, she was fond of him, too. They had grown close in their travels together. Though it was that very fondness, she knew it in her heart, which had almost killed her. He was struggling to hold his own against one of the soldiers, and that had distracted her. Her fear could have cost them both their lives.

A knock came at the door. Pod cleared his throat and went to answer it, opening the door to the healer who had come before with the herbs. The three of them looked at him expectantly.

“If you’re well, my lady,” the man said, “Reed would like to receive you in his quarters. I’m to bring you and your company.”

 

 


	13. Brienne VII

Brienne glanced down at herself. Her clothes were stiff with sweat, and the odors of battle and blood clashed against the earthly, sharp scent of the poultice at her neck. But she was clothed enough, she supposed, and had no other things to change into besides. She fluffed a hand through her hair.

“My cloak?” she asked to no one in particular, looking about for it. Her armor lay beside the table in a neat pile, and by the looks of it it had been gently cleaned of grime from the road. Podrick had gotten to it in the early hours of morning, probably. Once, that might have irritated her, but beyond the little bit of frustration she reserved for having lain in an unconscious heap for the past number of hours, Brienne felt only thankfulness for Podrick. _He never tires_ , she thought, putting her embarrassment to rest for a time. Podrick ought to have run off long ago, ought to have attached himself to some man who would in all likelihood do more for his life and station than she could, but he had declared his intent to remain in her company nearly from the start, and had not wavered. It had been some time since she had last doubted him, but still to think back on all the journeying they had shared, and to consider him for what he was, a most loyal friend, itched the corners of her lips into a small smile.

“Here,” said Jaime, drawing her out of her thoughts. He fetched the cloak from the chair where he had sat before the fire and extended it to her, not quite meeting her eyes.

"Thank you,” she offered quietly, taking it and with a grimace wrapping herself in its furs. It was made in the northern style, with two thick bands of leather that crossed the chest, but she laid it limply over her shoulders for now. She did not want to strain her injury, nor did she want any of the men to rush to help her as though she were some invalid. Lifting her chin a little, she glanced to the healer, who returned her gaze with a friendly look. “What is your name, sir?”

“Erwin,” the old man said with a slight bob of his head. “Of the Greenhands family.”

“I must thank you, Erwin Greenhands, for caring for my life.”

He tucked his hands into the long folds of his sleeves and nodded once more. “If you are ready, then.”

“Yes,” she said, and she and Jaime started for the door.

“I’ll remain here, my lady,” said Podrick. 

She raised her eyebrows. He had as much right as either of them to learn their circumstances, and she wanted him there with her besides. “No,” she said, “that’s all right. Come.”

Erwin led them through the corridors of Greywater Watch to a high, sparse room with a many-paned window wrought in delicate, reed-like twists of iron, beyond which Brienne could see the wide river flow past tall banks that rose up around them on all sides. It was as though the whole fortress was sunk low on the surface of the water, so low she imagined it was only just visible from the shore above them. A strange river—she did not believe she knew its name. Most like, it was as secret as the castle itself. She had a feeling of a sudden that she was in an old place, a place old as the ages. What had Erwin called himself? Greenhands? A name from the stories, she realized, a name she hadn’t thought of since she was a child in Evenfall Hall. Garth Greenhand, that was how she knew it. He had supposedly sired half the noble houses of Westeros. Surely this gentle old healer bore no actual relation to a figure who was more myth than man. She felt foolish for not even noticing before he when had he told her, but she could not ask him about it now. Brienne looked to Jaime beside her, who met her eyes with as much trepidation as she expected showed on her own face.

Before the great window stood a man who was small in stature and simply dressed, but he had a quiet, dignified air about him. At his side was a girl of indeterminate age, also humbly dressed in breeches and a net of furs and coarse-woven wool. She had a little of his likeness, though he had a short shag of greying hair, and she a pretty halo of dark, long curls.

“My guests,” said the man. “Thank you, Erwin.”

The healer nodded and left them. The lord stepped closer to their small party. He extended an arm to Brienne.

“I am Howland Reed. It is good to meet you, Brienne of Tarth.” 

She looked down at his arm a moment, wondering, before she offered her own in return, and together they clasped each other at the elbow.

When Jaime said nothing, she ventured with some awkwardness, “If you excuse me, Lord Reed, I must tell you that I do not know why you have given us your shelter and your care. Although from what little I do understand, I owe you and your men my life.”

“Yes,” said Reed. His pale eyes danced like river water. “I expect you have questions. I have my own, as well.” 

He gestured to the girl beside him, who stepped forward at his motioning.

“This is Meera, my daughter. She can answer just as well as I, if not better. Come, please,” he said, “We will all be more comfortable if we are seated.” 

_I’m fine_ , Brienne again wanted to insist, but she, Jaime, and Podrick followed the Reeds to a long table hewn from a dark wood, and each sank down into a chair. Once they were seated, a silence fell between them, as neither party seemed to know where to lead the conversation. It was Jaime, in the end, who stirred first.

“You said, before, that you had something to explain. How is it you came upon us?”

Brienne looked at him. Perhaps, before, a _“Well?”_ might have hung at the edges of the Lannister’s question, but the arrogance she had known in him before seemed to have been sapped out by some greater exhaustion. He only watched the lord’s face, waiting. Howland nodded his head. But it was Meera who spoke.

The girl, though young, had a serious look. Her dark curls fell over her shoulders as she leaned forward in her chair and said, “There is very much about our people that I understand you do not know.” She glanced to her father, who regarded their party. She went on, “We are of the North, and we keep to our own ways. But there are stories of our house you may have heard all the same. My brother had the gift of the greensight. He saw things, dreamed things, that sometimes weren’t, and sometimes were. When he died, a single dream passed to me.

“I have been with Bran Stark beyond the Wall. I have been with the Children of the Forest, who sheltered us from an army that brings a winter none have known since the time of the Long Night. Among the children lived a man who was called the Three-Eyed Raven, the last true greenseer. He passed all he knew to Bran. But I have seen enough with my own eyes to tell you of the Night that comes. A hundred thousand dead march for the Wall, and if they break it, they will take every last life that stands in their way.”

She paused, watching them for any contest. Brienne’s eyes slid again to Jaime, who still sat silent at her side. As she considered the girl’s words, her thoughts spooled out in every direction in search of sense and reason. Bran Stark was alive in Winterfell, that Brienne knew. She had not spoken with the strange crippled lord, but she had seen him enough to know that some unhappy fate must have befallen him—he was watchful, cold, quiet as snow. His own sisters seemed not to know him, Sansa most of all. Could the Reed girl be speaking truth? Could there really be dreams that showed the future? Had they truly gone beyond the Wall and dealt with the Children of the Forest—another myth? She felt her brow knit tight into a frown as she struggled to comprehend it all, but somehow she knew it could not be a lie. None of it.

“We know what comes,” Brienne said at last. “We’ve seen it. We’ve seen one of the dead.”

Something brightened in the girl’s eyes. Courage, perhaps, though she didn’t seem short of it. “Then you know that we must fight, together.”

Beside her, she felt Jaime tilt every so slightly forward.

“If what you say is true, Lady Meera, I’m all too happy to gain another ally,” he said. “But what is it that you saw?”  

The girl who had sat so upright and stoic at her seat crumpled a little at that, though her still-bright eyes flashed to Jaime.

“You,” she said. “You, and Brienne of Tarth at the moor. I dreamed that we would find you there. I do not know why. I have never dreamed as my brother Jojen did, I never had the gift. But since he died at the children’s gate, almost every time I have slept I have dreamed of a blue knight and a one-handed man riding behind her. When I returned from Winterfell to my home here at Greywater, I set a watch for you.”

She turned to Brienne. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know much more than that. I knew it was of utmost importance that I find you. That our paths meet."

 

 


	14. Jaime VIII

Meera leaned back in her chair, and a silence fell again between them. While Brienne and Jaime considered the girl’s words, light off the river rippled across the cold stone floor and lapped faintly at their feet.

_Can Bran Stark really be alive?_ At Meera’s earlier mention of his name, Jaime’s mind had caught like cloth on a nail and jagged violently in all directions. He had believed the boy long dead, but if he did indeed live as the Reed girl seemed to suggest, maybe her father hoped to exact revenge. _Perhaps this is all a story…perhaps they mean to send me running to the Stark’s executioner block._ He was uneasy to accept a girl’s dream—did she mean to imply it was a prophecy of some kind?—as the true reason for the happy coincidence of their meeting on the moor. _No,_ he thought, _she must know. She must know what I have done._ But even though he was disinclined to believe her dream, even though he ought to assume the Reeds took him for their enemy, sitting there before her he struggled to find any falseness in her face or voice. She met his stare levelly, with dour, dark eyes.

At the end of the table, Howland stirred.

“It is a strange notion to you, I know,” said the crannog lord. “Even among our people, for whom knowledge of the greensight has not yet faded, it is an uncommon gift, and it is not one easily understood. When my daughter came to me with her dream, we could only wait and watch for you to see whether it would be true.”

The father and daughter exchanged a look which drove Meera’s gaze down to her hands. Jaime thought of the sadness he had found in the man’s eyes before on their dark ride through the boglands. _He lost a son, somehow, in the north. The girl said the dreams began when her brother died._  

Howland spoke again, interrupting Jaime's thoughts. "But you’ve come,” he said. His voice was placid as water. “And we are glad to have you.”

Before him at the table, a small bit of parchment and a quill had lain idle. Howland Reed dipped the quill’s nib into its font and with it marked his name in a quick, scrolling hand. He stood, handing the message to his daughter. “Meera, tell Erwin this letter is to be sent to Lady Sansa of Winterfell.” He turned to Brienne and Jaime, who also stood from their chairs. Brienne rose unsteadily to her feet, her face pale.

“Lady Brienne, you are still weak from your injury. When you are ready, and not before, I trust you’ll make for Winterfell. We will send in your company some three hundred men and women.” The pale-eyed lord smiled faintly. “We are a small house, and even with our sworn brothers and sisters we stand little taller. But we will send every one of our people who can hold a bow and spear and fight. Reed, Boggs, Peat, Cray, Fenn, Greengood, Quagg, and Blackmyre—all will go to the Starks’ command. The rest who are able will remain here and hold the Neck, should it come to that.”

“Thank you for your generosity, Lord Reed,” said Brienne. “We will go north with your people.”

As Meera slipped from the room with her lord father’s missive, Jaime stole a glance at Brienne. Dark blood dotted through the bandage at her neck, and standing there, one hand grasping onto her chair for balance, she looked as grim as ever, but she held the crannog lord’s gaze with statuesque grace. He had always known her to be stubborn and strong, but the woman before him now was no less than noble. _She looks kingly. Like a warrior from a song._

Reed inclined his head to her. “The crannogsmen remember the Night just as well as we remember the stars, the soil, and the fish that swim the river.” He looked to Jaime, too. “Who can say why my daughter dreamed of you? Whatever purpose you have in the days to come, destiny has joined us to you. I give you my friendship as we have long given it to the North, with mercy to the weak, help to the helpless, and justice to all. By earth and water, bronze and iron. By ice and by fire. I swear it.”

Podrick, Jaime, and Brienne accepted the lord’s words in somber, weighted silence. Outside the great room, a light rain had begun to fall, and a few marsh birds sang in wet voices.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I must see to the preparations. Should you need anything, ask for Meera or Erwin. They will assist you.”

“Might I make use of your ravens as well? I would also like to send word to my Lady Stark. It’s been long since I have given her notice,” Brienne said.

“Of course,” said Reed. “Erwin will see your message is sent.”

The three of them walked from the windowed room back through the winding corridors of Greywater Watch, their silence trailing after them. When they arrived to the joined quarters they had been given, Brienne sank down to sit at the edge of the featherbed, her hand searching her belt for the waxen leaves. Jaime watched as she chewed one, a fine sweat misting over her brow.

“Pod,” he said, “get her some parchment and ink for her letter.” The young man looked at him with some surprise, but he nodded and went quickly enough, shutting the heavy oak door behind him. With just the two of them there, the room felt darker somehow, and quiet.

A sigh escaped her. “What can it mean?”

“The bog girl’s dream? You think I know?” He lingered before the extinguished hearth where he had slept the past night. An awkwardness prevented him from drawing much nearer to her.

“Jaime,” she said. His chest stirred absurdly to hear his name said that way, in her severe and tired voice.

“Are you going to tell me now why it is you are here?”

_She means to ask me why I’ve come without Cersei’s army._ He supposed he had to share his news with her, much as he dreaded it. The Reeds had proven themselves friendly to their cause, however much he struggled to understand why or how they had chosen to accept him for an ally. In spite of what he suspected Meera knew, in spite of the rift that had long divided the North from his family’s house, it seemed their people could be trusted. Even so, he found he did not want to tell her. _I’m ashamed to_ , he thought, the realization descending on him from far away. For that one, ridiculous instant he had believed he would lead the southern forces north, and he had been proud. He had thought he would be allowed to do what was needed, what was right. But Cersei’s heart was black, and he was ever the fool.  

He almost could not bear to meet her eyes.

“Cersei deceived Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. She never meant to send her men. She will keep them south with Euron Greyjoy’s fleet and wait for the North to fall.”

“Then she betrays us all." 

Jaime looked up to find Brienne’s gaze bound to him like a vise.

“Yes,” he said.

The giant woman chewed one cheek. “And you mean to ride North to tell the Starks as much?” 

“They won’t like to hear it,” he answered. “They’ll as soon kill me where I stand. But yes, I’ll tell them. They have to know.”

“They won’t kill you,” she said, irritated. “I will not allow it.” 

He opened his mouth to quip something back, but Podrick returned then with a soft rap at the door, pushing it open before waiting for a response.  
  
“Lady Brienne,” he said, offering a scroll of parchment and a tray of ink and wax and quill. “Erwin says I’m to carry your message to him in the rookery when you've made it out.” 

“Thank you, Pod,” she said. She gestured with her hand to the table beside the window. “Set it there and wait, I’ll send you with it in just a moment.”

She moved to the table and took up the quill and parchment, hesitating while Jaime and Podrick looked on.

_Will she write that I go with her, now? Will she warn them she rides with a lion?_

Jaime turned away and knelt before the hearth, busying himself with some kindling and the flint stone. The fingers of his left hand were cold, and he struggled with the flint a moment, but on the fourth try he managed to nurse some sparks from it, and he bent low beside the wood, blowing at it until the flames purred forward. While he worked, Brienne’s quill itched across the parchment. He fed a few larger limbs of kindling to the fire, and he rocked back on his feet. “Here,” he heard her say, and Podrick brought the little carafe of wax to Jaime at the fire. He took it and with his good hand held it over the flames a while until the wax ran hot, and he offered it back. Pod brought it to Brienne, and she poured it and set the seal into it with a hiss.

“Thank you,” she said once more, and the young man went again from the room. 

Rain fell swiftly now outside the window, running in streams down the thick glass panes.

“You’re tired,” Jaime observed from where he crouched by the fire. “Why not rest a while?" Her lips dropped open, but he cut in, "No, don’t protest. The sooner you rest, the sooner we can return you north to your Lady Sansa.” A gentle teasing, but he had the satisfaction of watching her too-pale cheeks prickle with color. 

“All right,” she agreed easily enough, but with a voice thick and shy she said, “I would like a bath, though, and some privacy.”

He had to restrain himself from smiling. _You ridiculous woman, I’ve seen all of you and more, what is there to blush about?_ Briefly, fondly, dangerously, his thoughts flew to the bath they shared at Harrenhal and how his goading had driven her to erupt from the water, alive with fury. Water had dripped from her naked body as she stood above him, and he beheld her with a mixture of surprise and lust. Remembering the built curves of her figure and the faint flush the bath had given her skin roused a traitorous heat to his own face, though, and he turned to look at the fire. 

“I’ll leave you, then.” He stirred the logs once more before he stood and went, shutting the door behind him. On the other side of the door, he paused a moment, considering that in another lifetime he might have found something mocking to say before leaving her, but he shook his head and went on soon enough. _I’ll send a maid to her with some water._ He passed through the narrow corridors of the Watch until he found a young serving girl he thought would do and told her a bath was to be taken to Brienne’s rooms. Then Jaime turned into an open yard and let the rain run over his face and quench him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Book readers might notice I yoinked the structure for Howland's vow from Jojen and Meera's swear of fealty to Bran in A Clash of Kings. I really try not to lift language from the books, as this is strictly fan fiction etc etc, but I thought in this case it'd be a nice call back.
> 
> Thanks again for reading! <3


	15. Brienne VIII

The morning they departed from Greywater Watch, the sky hung low and dense over the river which had after several days of rain risen up around its banks, a swollen, surging, saltless sea. The barges brought them out of the great stone gate by the tenfold and deposited the crannogmen and women at the northernmost bank, where their small, mossy-clothed army fell into clustered groups and waited. Jaime, Podrick, and Brienne were among the last to join them, leading their horses up onto the muddy shore. Jaime and Brienne exchanged a brief look, Brienne nodding once, and they climbed into their saddles, riding into the midst of the crannog command to join Howland’s man and trusted cousin, Kerill Reed, who sat astride a small bay mare. 

“I hope you know the way out of this godforsaken bog,” Jaime called across her to Kerill.

“Aye,” came a voice from behind them. Brienne twisted on her mount, straining against the confines of her gorget to see the lord of the crannogmen as he approached. “That’s one thing you don’t have to fear.”

Howland Reed reined his horse to stop beside them.

“You’ll join us, Lord Howland?” she asked, struggling to keep the surprise from her voice. It was fortuitous that he would lead his men to Winterfell, as they seemed to love the crannog lord. _Love will strengthen any man’s courage now. It will have to be love and it will have to be courage, if we’re to send them running to meet the greatest horror the living have ever seen._ But Brienne could not understand why he would have kept this from them when he had been so open before. Her gaze slid to Jaime, who watched the man with equal interest. 

Howland leaned his arms onto the horn of his saddle. Behind them, beyond the rustling and the shouts of the last of the crannog soldiers falling into their positions to march, the secretive grey river rushed and seethed at its banks. Howland met her eyes. Though she had often seen him smile during their stay at Greywater Watch, the man who regarded her now was ashen and grave.

“All the tales whispered of my people every last castle and hill over—that we are liars and thievers and cowards—they may as well be true,” he said at last. “I’ve been a coward most my life. I sent my children to terrible fates, and only one returned to me. Before, I was called on when Robb Stark rode south with his army. I chose not to heed that call, though twice he sent his northmen looking for me to plead my aid. And the boy-king fell, surrounded by his enemies.” Howland’s eyes slid to Jaime, whose mare shifted unsteadily on the claggy soil. “How much might have been different, had I fought beside him, had I given my life and my people over to the wars of the few? Would Robb Stark have lived? Would I still have a son?”

The lord shook his head, winding his reins tightly in his fists. His shaggy, dun-colored palfrey danced beneath him. “Perhaps things would be no different, and you and I would be here speaking these words to one another just the same. I can't know. That is a dream of what might have been, a dream none of us will live to see now. It’s time I honor a promise I swore long ago to keep.”

Beneath the river’s churn, Jaime’s voice was soft. “The rest of your bannermen. How will they find us?”

The man inclined his head north. “East of Moat Cailin lies the river Fever, which runs west into Blazewater Bay,” he said _._ “At her mouth there is a spring we crannogmen know. We’ll meet there by nightfall.”

He turned to Kerill then. “Give the signal.”

The freckle-nosed man nodded and from his belt drew a fine whistle the color of the weirwood bow slung across his back. He pressed it to his lips and blew, and from it sang a strange, airy voice like the call of the lapwings, birds that made their home in the fens and river narrows of the boglands.

At the sound of Kerill’s call, the crannogmen started forward, fanning out into the tall grasses. Beside her, the Reeds flicked their horses’ reins, and Jaime, Podrick, and Brienne urged their horses on, too, together flowing out over the bogs in silent streams.

When they came upon the Fever, the sun was a low, wan disk on the horizon, and the cold had long since settled into her muscles and bowed her stiffly over her saddle. Their party stopped at the spring Howland had described earlier, a meager, dark trickle of water running out from the ground that Brienne knew she never would have discovered had she not been led to it. Kerill and few of the other commanding crannogmen began directing their people to make camp, and as darkness swelled over them, a few fires were coaxed to blaze and cookeries smoked with the scent of roots and game. But when night truly fell upon them, it was as Howland said. The last of the crannog tribes appeared out of the shadows, falling in beside their brothers and sisters around their fires and clasping one another’s arms. They were several hundred, now—not a huge army, but Brienne felt warmed and sheltered by their company. These were a people of the hills and rivers and stars, and it felt to her like they had lived forever. Like they had known other ages, and would perhaps live to see the next.

Landwise people that they were, they did not keep tight formations nor did they erect war tents for their lords and commanders to sleep within. That suited her, since despite the cold she didn’t particularly mislike sleeping beneath the open sky. A tent hadn’t protected Renly, after all, and it wouldn’t shut out the cold. The crannogmen kept the fires well stoked, and soon she and Podrick took out their kits and laid them with the others around the flames.

Podrick fell to sleep quickly, as he always did. While he dreamed, she lay propped up on her elbow and watched the golden light ghost over his face. 

“Move over, will you?”

Jaime appeared above her, carrying his bedroll under his right arm. He had disappeared after they had made camp, and she and Podrick had supped alone with some men and women who said they were of the Fenn and Crays' folk.

“Where have you been?” she whispered.

“Talking with Reed,” he answered. He nudged her side with his boot. “Move.”

Grudgingly, she sat up and rearranged her roll to accommodate a space for him by the fire. He laid himself down beside her, shifting beneath the furs with a heavy sigh. He shut his eyes and made to fall asleep, but her mind raced.

“Soon we’ll arrive to Winterfell,” she said.

“Yes, that is rather the plan,” he retorted.

It was his tone that bit her. “And what _is_ your plan?" she hissed. "Do you mean to share it with me?”

She had the satisfaction of watching his eyes flicker open, but the intensity of the stare that met her jolted her own eyes down into the fur edging of her blankets. In a gentler voice, she said, “I only mean—we are walking into Sansa Stark’s court, and as I've said, I’ll do what I can to persuade her to let you keep your life, but what will you do—”  

“Beyond that, I have no plan,” he interrupted.

She let her gaze drift back up to him. She thought again of the dream she had of the baths deep beneath the ground, how she had waited for Jaime, but it was Cersei who had came. Her beauty had been cruel; it stung Brienne to remember the queen's perfect face grinning down at her in the dark of her dream. She thought, too, of the day in the Dragon Pit, when she had reached out to grasp Jaime’s arm and wrenched him around to face her. He looked at her now, he was close enough to touch. Softly, far away, she heard herself ask, “Why leave at all?”

Brienne watched their breath meet and tangle in the cold night air as silence grew between them.

“I came to honor my own oaths,” he said. “And here I am, ranging north."

He paused a moment, his lips hanging wryly ajar. A cold breeze raked over them, and Brienne twisted her hands in her fur blankets before he murmured at last in elaboration, "If they let me live, I'd like to fight beside you. If you’ll have me.”

“Jaime, I,” she tried, reaching in the darkness for something to say, but the earnestness of his words had startled her, and her voice faltered and failed.

He huffed out a breathy laugh, drawing the furs high over his cheeks with his good hand. “Go to sleep, Brienne,” he said into his blankets, and he shut his eyes and left her alone again with nothing but the wind and the crackle of the flames at her feet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long hiatus, I'm back to finish this story. Some of it will inevitably now be influenced by the path the show has taken, but I promise there will be many divergences from what I unfortunately have to call canon, and it's still driven toward the major plot points that I had intended to cover before Season 8 kicked into gear. It will also have to grow in scope from how I initially imagined it, but given how long-winded I've been and how meandering a path I've taken to get here, that seems only fair.
> 
> We'll finally arrive to WF next chapter. Thanks for sticking with me. 
> 
> x tru


	16. Jaime IX

The great hall of Winterfell was as he remembered it, though when he had last been among the Starks all those years ago, the severe rows of bare oak tables had been piled high with roast boar and braided breads, root stews, honeyed sweets, and dark, round apples the color of pitch. Those were peacetimes—their dregs anyway, before Robert fell to a pig and the whole of Westeros seemed to fall mad with him. In the low light of evening, with a squall of snow whirling behind the hall’s few windows and the three Stark children glaring at him where he stood, it struck him now as even more cheerless than before.

While Howland had been welcomed through the southern gate and his crannogmen directed where they might make camp within the castle walls, a guard of eight northmen had grasped hold of him at once and marched him inside. Between the rise and fall of their steps, from the corner of his eye he watched the solemn, pale streak of Brienne’s face as she hurried alongside them. He thought of calling out to assure her, _I’ve been jostled by a few northmen in my day._ But at the guards’ forcing his foot caught the lip of a stair, and he had stumbled forward, the jest dying in his mouth.

“Ser Jaime. How strange it is to receive you into my home,” came the cool voice of the eldest Stark girl, her few words of greeting carrying icily over the hall. 

Jaime lifted his eyes to her. When he had seen her last, Sansa Stark had been a captive of the crown. He could scarcely remember what she had looked like then, save that she had been unimportant—a meek and beautiful child. Now she may as well have been a figure from the stories, with her hair streaming down over her dark gown like a flame and her hands folded before her, one over the other. Now she was something else. A queen.

Behind where she and her brother and sister sat, a low fire fizzed and popped. Uncertain, Jaime bowed his head, though through the fringe of his hair he dared to glance across at the boy seated at Sansa’s shoulder. Bran Stark caught his gaze, his face impassive as stone. A chill drove through him, and Jaime dropped his eyes to the floor.

“Brienne,” said Sansa after a pause. “Why have you brought me this man?”

“He has come of his own accord, my lady,” he heard Brienne answer, though he did not turn to look. “He brings a message that you must hear.”

An edge danced out from her voice, sharp as a sword. “And why must I hear it?” Sansa tilted her head, and her hair caught the light from the great hearth and burned. “When his word means so little?

“He has betrayed my family,” said Sansa Stark. “He attacked my father in King’s Landing, and he stood by as the Lannisters made every effort to destroy my house. He would have seen us all perish, and he would have felt no grief over it. And why stop at those deeds, however particular to my heart and home? This is a man who was sworn to protect his king, but he did not hesitate to betray his vow when he pushed his sword into Aerys’ back for his father's army to sweep in to take the city. And yet in spite of his dishonor, in spite of his every act of treachery and deceit, I still might hear him. So many words precede you, Ser Jaime Lannister, how fortunate for you. My brother Jon has sent a raven telling me your sister has allied herself to our cause, and that you are to lead her forces north to fight beside us in the coming battle against the dead. And my trusted sword Brienne of Tarth has written me with the information that you come in her company. So here you are, Ser Jaime, alone in my hall. You seem to be without the great army promised in Jon’s letter. Am I to believe your many thousands of men have been misplaced?” 

Jaime looked up at her, the bite of bile rising in his throat. He opened his mouth to speak, but Brienne stepped forward, coming to stand beside him.

“My lady, please. I wrote to you with the message that I was returning north with Ser Jaime because I hoped to warn you. So that you might anticipate the message he himself carried.” 

Sansa shifted her stare onto Brienne, who met her gaze evenly.

“Many stories have been told of Ser Jaime. Some are not false,” she said. “But I have known him, and I know him to be true. All these years past, your lady mother Catelyn Stark freed him from your brother’s camp—”

As she spoke, a few of the northerners began to murmur to one another, and Brienne hesitated. Sansa held up a hand, hushing them.

The tall, proud woman set her jaw and went on. “She freed him from your brother’s camp on the condition he swore to her that when I delivered him to King’s Landing he would ensure her daughters were exchanged in return. He was my prisoner, but when we were captured by Roose Bolton’s men, and they tried to force themselves on me, he risked his life to save me, and for that lost his hand.” 

Jaime sensed her gaze had fallen upon him, and he felt it as a heat stronger than the hearth’s blaze. It was all he could do to remain upright beside her. 

“We left our captors together,” she said. “But when we at last arrived to the capital, it was already too late. You and your sister had since disappeared.”

Arya, the younger of Ned’s daughters, leaned forward in her chair. He hadn’t paid her much attention since his audience before the Starks had begun, but it was difficult not to notice her now. She watched him with dark, unreadable eyes.

“Yet still he chose to honor the vow he swore your mother,” Brienne concluded. “He sent me from the city to find you and bring you home. Were it not for him, I never could have discovered you. I never could have saved your life. He is an honorable man. More honorable than you know.”

Sansa moved her hands to grip either arm of her chair. “You trust him.”

“I do.”

The Lady of Winterfell said nothing else, only regarded him. The room was still.

Jaime shifted uncomfortably where he stood.

“Cersei has deceived your brother and Daenerys Targaryen," he said. "She deceived me, also. She never had any intention of sending her army—she will remain in King’s Landing with Euron Greyjoy’s fleet and wait out the threat from the north. Then she will attack.”

The news rippled out through the hall in a wave of disquiet, prompting several northmen to stumble forward and shout in protest. Sansa again lifted a hand, and the crowd fell into whispers.

“So why have you come, if your sister means to betray us? Is she not your queen?”

Sansa’s words cut into him, though he knew that was their intent. He would not let her see him wince. Beside him, Brienne stood as rigid as a mountain. His eyes flickered over her before they crept along the floor and back up to Sansa.

“I came because this goes beyond family, or houses, or loyalty,” he said. “I came because I want to fight for the living. You can cut me down me where I stand. That is your choice. Or you can let me go into battle with you. I’m not the swordsman I once was, but I can still fight.”

For a long moment, Sansa considered him. 

“Brienne?” she said, interrupting her silence. She looked to her fair, strong guard. “It appears this man is your friend. What would you have me do?”

 _Don’t fucking let me die,_ he thought miserably, though his chest swelled as Brienne stepped forward and inclined her head, a chop of blonde hair falling over her eyes.

“Let him fight beside me, my lady. I will have him.”

At that, the flame-haired woman nodded, and she gestured to a guardsman who brought Jaime his belt and sword. Inside his ears his blood rang loud as the bells of a sept, but he took them with a short, stiff bow, and quietly he fastened Widow’s Wail again at his waist. 

“Then, Ser Jaime,” said Sansa, “you will stay, and you will fight as you have asked.” 

Brienne’s hand on his arm was a shock that nearly sent him out of his skin, but gently she closed her fingers around his elbow, and he let her lead him to a table at the side of the hall. The whole of the room’s stare at last lifted from them when Sansa spoke again, though this time it was Lord Howland’s name she called. He stepped toward the Starks from where he had waited at the back from the hall, and the slight man bowed.

“Lord Reed, another unexpected guest,” she said, though a lightness had come into her voice. “How is it we have the honor of receiving you and your people here?”  
  
“My lady Sansa, Lady Arya,” he answered. The two women regarded him. He looked to her younger brother beside her. “Lord Bran. It is as I have promised in my letter. I bring you my friendship, the same I gave your father. We will join you in the battle against the Night King and his armies.” Howland glanced at Jaime. “I come because I too bear a message, though mine I’ve kept these past twenty-some years. I would share it with your family tomorrow, privately.”

Jaime watched as the young man he once thought he had sent to his death leaned his head back against his chair and faintly smiled.


	17. Brienne IX

Brienne awoke before dawn to a diffuse darkness. Outside her shuttered window, the lone voice of a crow laughed throatily, then was still.

In spite of the deep ache in her muscles which bid her to stay longer beneath the covers, she rose and went about dressing herself, first pulling on thick woolen stockings over her underclothes, then lacing up her jerkin and fastening Oathkeeper into its place at her waist. She wrapped herself in her cloak, shuddering at its abrupt warmth, and she stepped into her boots before she went out the door.

When they first returned to Winterfell after it had been retaken, Sansa had given her a room within the wing where she and her siblings kept their chambers, at the heart of the castle. This was in part ideal for her protection, as Brienne would never be more than a short flight away from her lady. But Brienne knew Sansa had in truth arranged it for her because the other men would not have wanted her in the barracks. Podrick slept there among the Stark guards and soldiers, as was appropriate, but she wouldn’t ever belong—they would not accept it. It was not a woman’s place.

She wound her way through the sleeping castle down the steps to the great hall, where a fire had been stoked from yesterday’s coals, and a few of the higher ranked serving men and women broke their fast together on bowls of hot porridge sweetened with honey and whey. She spooned herself some and took up a place on the bench beside them, ignoring that their chatter died the moment she had sat down. No doubt they had been discussing the audience that had taken place the prior evening, and how the Kingslayer had followed Brienne from the hall afterward, before she had turned around and loudly told him to seek out her squire in the barracks and bade him goodnight. The memory brought a flush to her cheeks. _He only wanted to speak with me. He had something to say._ But whatever it was, she hadn’t wanted to hear it just then. She had only wanted one thing, and that was to be alone with her thoughts in the dark of her room, and gladly she had left him standing there while behind her streams of servants and northerners pushed around him to return to their beds.

Brienne finished her meal quickly, drawing the stares of the others as her chair scraped back against the floor, and she turned back the way she came. As she climbed the stairs to her chambers, sunlight began to break through the clouds at the horizon. It fell faintly through the halls, washing the stones in a pretty, pale light, but it would not be enough to warm them. Nothing had, in the short while Brienne had known this place. _Perhaps it’s different in the summers. Perhaps there’s sun and happiness in these halls._ Brienne let her door open with a sigh and began the work of lacing on her armor. When Podrick arrived not long after, she acknowledged him with a nod, and he went about finishing the rest with deft hands.

“It was a brave thing you did,” he said.

She turned her head to look at him. He raised his eyes from where his fingers worked the joint of her pauldrons.

“It wasn’t—brave,” she said, haltingly. “Lady Sansa is fair, she wouldn’t have hurt him.” 

Dropping his gaze back to the fastens at her shoulder, Podrick countered her in a gentle voice. 

“The north has no love for him or his family. You and I have seen it, they’re not quick to forgive the ones that wronged them. Even if she decided not to execute him and let him walk away, the other lords might not have been so fair.”

Brienne watched the top of his head as he worked, a lump wedging itself in her throat. He was right, she knew. She was fortunate to have successfully persuaded Sansa of the truth—the truth she had long known about Jaime. That he had done so much, for her, for the realm, more than anyone understood. That he was good. In actuality, Brienne had said too little; she could have told them his greatest secret, the one he divulged to her in the bath at Harrenhal while he was weak and beautiful, while the torchlamps burned and there were shadows all around them. That secret had changed how she had seen him forever. It had changed everything. But it wasn’t hers to say. The defense she had given, however, the words that had flowed out of her before her sworn lady and court as swift and easy as breath, that would suffice to protect him.

She cleared her throat softly. “Right, well. Let’s get on before the day is old.” 

Together they went down to spar at the yard where the other men had already begun to gather in the cold. As she worked with Pod, a fine sheen of sweat had broken along her neck and brow, and precious warmth flowed finally to her feet and fingers. 

“Again,” she called as she marked him at the shoulder.

He fell back to his footing, and their swords sprung together and apart four and five times more, and each time she bested him, and each time he paced back to face her again. When at last he landed a strong strike against her, she shouted out, “Good!” and a grin split over his face and was mirrored back at him in hers. They separated, Podrick panting, while Brienne leant a little on her sword.

From behind her, someone clapped, a faint, muffled sound amidst the clashing of steel. 

“Very well fought,” said Jaime.

Straightening, she turned around and set her lips into a grim line.

“Ser Jaime,” she greeted him. 

“Good morning,” he said with a slight and somber bow, though Brienne saw his eyes jump with telltale mirth.

Brienne sheathed her sword and said to her squire, “That’s enough for now, Pod. Thank you.”

The young man nodded and turned to face another of the soldiers. She brushed past Jaime, but he followed at her heels, chattering.

“You’ve done well with him, it shows. Have they given you other men to train while you’ve been here? They ought to. It’s time you—” 

She stopped as she reached the flight of stairs that led to the Stark wing, whirling round to face him. He blinked, stumbling to a halt behind her.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Attempting to talk with you,” he said.

“It’s nearly midmorning, and Sansa will be in her solar. I have to attend to her. I’m going there now.”

She waited for him to cut in with some reply, but to that Jaime said nothing and only gazed up at her with a curious sort of look she found difficult to read. He stood close to her, on the next step, and she found herself staring down at him with no more than a hand’s width between them. Of a sudden, Brienne heard her breath echo against the dark stones of the narrow, winding stair.

“If you mean to thank me—” she started in, the abruptness of her voice startling her. 

His hand shot forward then and captured hers. Hot from laboring on the sparring yard, she had tucked her gloves into her belt. The brush of his bare skin against hers sent a jolt of heat searing along her spine to where it gathered in a flush at her ears. 

“I do.” He let her hand drop back to her side, and she watched it fall there, where now only air kissed it. “That’s all. Thank you.”

Then he turned and went down along the steps until he disappeared around their curve, and Brienne was left only with the sound of her breath still bouncing loudly against the walls. Her hand itched with the memory of his, and she flexed her palm and fingers, vainly trying to slacken the sensation from her skin. After a long moment, though, her breath had calmed, and she marched up the stairs and through the halls to Sansa’s chambers. Hesitantly, she held that same fist to the door, then knocked. 

“Come,” called Sansa.

She was seated in a fine chair by the hearth, a handmaid working a comb through her long, bright hair.

“I’m glad you’ve returned to me,” she said.

“Of course, my lady,” Brienne answered from where she stood, dipping her head. “I will always return to you.” 

The young woman smiled. She had a handsome smile, one of the rare things in this forsaken place that could warm a person. Brienne tried to answer it with a smile of her own, though as her lips stretched to form it she knew it would never be as sweet as the Lady of Winterfell’s. She had learned long ago to hide her teeth when she had reason to smile, and it was seldom that she forgot herself and grinned with them outright. _Brienne the Mule,_ the boys had once sung to her across the yard of Evenfall Hall, _Brienne the Beauty._ But Sansa was a beauty for true, and as she sat there before her fire and the handmaid worked a pretty coil of braids into her hair, Brienne was reminded of her mother, Catelyn, who had had beauty, yes, but strength, too. Sansa had the same. The thought made Brienne’s smile stretch a little wider and truer and reach even the corners of her eyes. 

But that soon fell away as she let her mind shift to a different thought, the one that had accompanied her the night before as she drifted to sleep.

“Lady Sansa, what has happened to Petyr Baelish?”

The handmaid’s fingers cinched a final knot of leather ribbon around a plait. Sansa reached up behind her and touched the woman’s arm, gently.

“Thank you,” she said, “That will be all.”

The maid curtseyed and left the room. Sansa folded her hands into her lap.

“It was discovered that he was plotting to poison Arya against me, and I against her.” She sighed. “I knew this was his aim. Nearly from the first moment I had known him, really known him, I have understood that he wanted nothing else but power. He hoped to seduce me, marry me for his own, take the North. Perhaps he loved me. Perhaps he would have tired of me. Littlefinger was a snake, it’s true, and I had no more use for him.” 

Sansa let out another uneasy breath. 

“Bran—he helped us to see the extent of the game Littlefinger played. He saw the past, saw what really happened in King’s Landing, the day my father died. It was Littlefinger who arranged it. Who arranged it from the start. I didn’t believe it, at first, but you must understand, Bran said—impossible things. Things from my own past, when I was held apart from my home, my family, everything and everyone I ever loved. Things no one else could have witnessed.”

Brienne thought of the Reed girl, who had spoken of Bran’s journey beyond the wall and his inheritance of what the crannogmen called the greensight. _So Bran truly can see everything that has been. Everything that was._

“I had no choice then but to believe what I know to be true,” she said. “He was found guilty before the court, and he was executed for his crimes.”

At that admission, Sansa shook her head. Brienne knew it must have troubled her. However much Baelish had deceived her, had deceived them all, her fate had been joined to his by a terrible bond. Now that bond was severed. Perhaps it was not so different from the way she had felt in the days following the one she had at last discovered Stannis Baratheon and fulfilled the oath she had sworn to herself to avow the night so long ago when she had witnessed Renly fall to a shadow. _There is an emptiness, a profound kind of emptiness that comes at the end of an oath fulfilled._ She remembered the ride through the northern wood after, the rush of blood in her veins and the ringing in her ears so loud it stopped all thought. She might have been consumed by an odd sorrow had she not a different purpose yet to fulfill. Had she not yet found Sansa and, finding her, vowed herself to her service.

Breaking the silence between them, Arya arrived with Bran, wheeling him into the room. Brienne greeted them, but remained at Sansa’s side, her hand resting on the pommel of the Valyrian sword at her hip.

There was a knock then at the door, and Howland entered, closing it behind him.

“Lord Howland,” said Sansa from her chair. “What is it you have come to tell us?”

The man smiled sadly.

“I would have thought it best to keep this message a little longer,” he replied. “I see your brother, Jon, is not yet with you.”

Sansa raised one fine, arched brow. “He will be, soon. By the last raven from White Harbor, he marches with Daenerys and her armies and will arrive no later than nightfall today. If you wish to hold your message, we can meet again later, after he comes. Is that what you want?”

The smile faded on his lips. “I might be inclined to agree, yes, but when I woke this morning I felt in my heart a strange certainty. Forgive me, but if I choose to wait now, I fear I will have to wait forever.” 

Reed looked to Bran. Arya, Brienne, and Sansa all turned their stares to the strange and crippled lord, who nodded his head slowly.

“Jon, your brother,” Howland said at last. “He has never known his mother. But the day he was born, I was there. So was Ned Stark, only it wasn’t as Ned told you. It wasn’t as Ned told anyone. That was a lie, a lie he told to protect the boy. The day we found his sister, Lyanna Stark, she lay on a birthing bed in the Tower of Joy, and there she died, but not before passing a babe into Ned’s arms. That babe was the last living child of Rhaegar Targaryen. Ned and I alone survived that day, and when we rode from that place I swore to him I would hold the secret of Jon’s parentage with my life, until the day came that Ned would tell him.”

They stared at him, transfixed. Outside Sansa’s solar, a cloud broke apart in the sky, and sunlight shone brightly over the floor. 

“Only that day never came. And now he must know must know the truth.”

 

 


	18. Brienne X

Sansa leaned forward in her chair. Although her delicate white hands had remained clasped in her lap, Brienne watched the lady’s fingers turn purple at the joints where the blood was trapped by her grip.

“How can that be?” she said. “Lyanna—she was taken by Rhaegar and raped. You're saying Jon is the child of this horrible act?”

Sansa turned her head, her braid slipping over her shoulder. “Bran? Is this true?” 

Some knowing look passed between Bran and the crannog lord.

“She was never taken,” Bran said, and his voice seemed to float far above the room, far beyond the confines of their sky and their world. “He loved her. And she loved him.”

“It’s as he says, my lady,” Howland agreed. “Of course, we did not know it ourselves until the day we discovered Lyanna in the tower. Everyone thought the worst of Lyanna’s fate, and we let them go on believing it. For that, I apologize. The real horror is the story, the story we told about your aunt and the man she loved. But it’s one your father maintained all those years in order to safeguard the truth of the tale, for he knew that in his grief Robert Baratheon could never understand, that he would turn over every kingdom, murder every innocent child in his path, before he allowed a Targaryen to survive this side of the Narrow Sea.”

“He’s not a Snow, then, not technically?” said Arya. Though the small woman stood placidly before them, her voice was constricted by a strange, amused sorrow. “He’s a, what would he be? Sand?" 

“No,” said Bran.

His sisters looked at him in confusion. Brienne’s eyes went to Howland for confirmation, but he, too, seemed puzzled.

“I admit,” Bran said slowly, “it’s possible I would never have noticed had Samwell Tarly not directed me to it. There is so much of the past to see. But while in the citadel he discovered the obscure little note in a maester’s entry, and can attest to its truth: Lyanna and Rhaegar were married in a secret ceremony in the wood south of Harrenhal, no more than a few leagues from where they met and escaped together.”

“Jon is not a bastard, has never been a bastard,” Sansa said. Her blue eyes shone with sudden tears as she looked between her brother and the crannog lord. “It’s true. Gods, it’s all true, isn’t it? He’s their legitimate son.”

Arya clutched a hand to her chin, seeming to suppress a smile. Bran bowed his head.

“My lady Sansa,” Brienne began, uncertainly. They all turned to look at her. “If I may.”

She nodded, giving a little wave of her hand. Brienne attempted to straighten her shoulders. Her throat felt narrowed, like she could scarcely force the breath out from her lungs.

“What will you do?” she managed. “Your brother—I mean—Jon. He returns with Daenerys Targaryen this very day, as you have said.”

Without hesitation, Sansa only replied, “Lord Howland himself has said it. It is time Jon was told.” She stood from her chair, extending her arm to the crannog lord. Brienne looked on as the man took her hand lightly and bowed over it. 

“Thank you, my lord,” she said. “Thank you for bringing us the truth. Something of Lyanna’s memory has been given back to us, today. Something of her has been allowed free.” 

The sun then passed behind a cloud, and the light which been so bright sapped out again from the solar. As the fire hissed quietly in its hearth, and the birdsong came in through the windows, the little room swelled with a sense of wonder so pure and so strong Brienne thought to herself that though she could barely name it she might remember the feeling for the rest of her days, however many she had left to live. But they were each startled out of the strange spell when they heard the soft crack of Bran’s head striking the back of his chair and saw his eyes roll back into his skull, a film of grey thick as a winter fog replacing the dark where his pupils had been.

“Bran?” said Arya, her hand flitting to her brother’s chair.

The lord blinked, and his eyes rolled forward again to peer out at them.

“The Wall, it’s fallen,” he said. “The survivors are here.”

Just as the words stopped on his tongue, shouts rang up from the yard below them. Arya and Brienne both crossed to the window, their hands since flown to their pommels.

The wildling man called Tormund was there, the ginger hair of his head matted and mad and unmistakably his even from this height. He was with two others she did not know. They were speaking with the guards, who stepped aside for them at their apparent urging. Brienne watched as they ran up the wooden steps that led from the courtyard and disappeared into the opposite hall.

“They’re looking for you, Sansa,” Bran said, and his voice was cold as stone.

The group of them fled the room, Arya pushing Bran down along the hall behind them. Sansa led them with Brienne following close behind, taking one step for every of Sansa’s two. As they rushed into the great hall, Sansa’s hair streamed behind her, torchlight flickering over it and catching its brilliance, driving Brienne to blink.   

The three men from the yard were already there, looking like death and worse. Tormund panted through his beard, and the one in the black furs Brienne recognized now to be Jon’s friend, a man of the Night’s Watch. She had met him briefly when she had brought Sansa to find Jon at Castle Black, before the Battle of the Bastards. The third, though—a slender, bent man with only one eye—she did not know him by anything beyond his repute. He could be none other than the Lightning Lord, Beric Dondarrion.

“We bring news from the Wall,” began Dondarrion.

“It’s bloody down,” the man in black, Edd Tollett, cut in.

Arya had since arrived with Bran. She brought him near and left him, going to stand by her sister’s side.

“How?” said Sansa, her eyes searching their faces.

But it was Bran who answered. “A dragon fell beyond the Wall, when Jon and the others went searching for their wight to bring south to Cersei. The Night King brought it back and controls it. With it, he felled the Wall at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.”

“Now it’s coming,” Tormund slurred in his thick voice. “The Night King, his army, and his dragon.”

“How long do we have?” asked Arya.

The tall wildling man looked down at her, frowning.

“Not long,” Tormund said. “Maybe a night and a day. Little more.” 

Sansa looked to Brienne, who met her eyes uneasily. Fear iced through her chest as Sansa said in a small voice, “But we’re not ready.”

“The dead don’t wait,” Tormund said.

Edd took a step forward. “We scouted around them when we came down from the wall,” he explained. “They will have taken every castle and holdfast between here and the Gift. If I had to wager a guess, they’re moving from Last Hearth as we speak.”

Sansa clutched her hands at her sides, seemingly unable to move, unable to say anything at all. They had all fallen silent, dread spilling through the hall and cluttering into their lungs like a heavy and oppressive gas.

A lone horn blew, and the three men turned as a guard came running to the great door of the hall.

“Jon,” Sansa breathed.

With her lady running beside her and clutching up her skirts of wool and sable as she stepped, Brienne and Sansa made their way to the parapets. The moment they reached the high stone walkway, a massive shadow blew past above them, then another, and Brienne and Sansa both staggered back to look behind them as two dragons soared over Winterfell, their great wings lapping at the sky. The short shag of Brienne’s pale hair drifted up and across her eyes in the sudden wind, and her heart pounded in her chest. Dumbly, she felt her side for her sword. 

They turned back to face the snowy fields, and there below they saw marching down through the miniature streets of Winter Town the dark streams of Daenerys Targaryen’s many thousand soldiers. At the head of the armies, riding forth out of Winter Town toward their castle’s solemn gates, were Jon Snow and the Dragon Queen.

 

 


	19. Jaime X

The wings of the dragons beat black above the stunted northern castle, and as they passed overhead, a wave of startled shouts and gasps rose up from the men and women in the yard. Jaime felt a familiar dread stir in his chest. Within the jumbled crowd of smallfolk and soldiers, boys and knights, word had already traveled about the arrival of Dondarrion, some wildling leader, and the new Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, who had all come riding through the east gate on horses run half to death. Now the walls of Winterfell themselves seemed to teem with whispers of the Targaryen and the return of their king. The crowd pressed around him, children ducking past their mothers' knees to race up to any stair or rampart that could allow them a view of the approaching army, but Jaime turned and pushed his way toward the great hall, where he knew eventually they would come. _Tyrion will be with them,_ he thought, shoving past a heavyset knight from the Vale. 

By the time they arrived into the hall, the fickle northern sky had again grown dark, and a light snow began to fall. In a show of welcome, Sansa had arranged for a meal of honeyed and roasted hens and a flavorful stew of apples and roots to be brought out, but despite the warmth of the hall and the coziness of the lady’s gesture, the room crackled with disquiet. Jaime watched the northern lords and Yohn Royce and his knights looking on with clear disdain at the long table before the hearth where Jon and Daenerys and the Starks were sat, while the Dragon Queen’s foreign soldiers waited at attention, their plates ignored and wine untouched. At the table nearest to Jaime’s, the wildling called Tormund and the man from the Night’s Watch leaned their heads to each other and spoke quietly. Tyrion had been seated to the opposite side of the room, beside Varys, Davos, and several others Jaime did not recognize: A dark-skinned woman with an air of calm, a stern commander of the Unsullied, and what he imagined could only be one of the fabled red priestesses of R’hllor, a woman of unearthly beauty wrapped in a cloak the color of aged blood. As their meal wound down, and each man had near eaten his full, Tyrion at last found him, and they locked eyes across the room. 

Sansa stood from her chair, her chalice raised. The room fell to a hush. 

“To Jon Snow,” she called, “The King in the North.”

A cheer erupted from the room. “The King in the North,” they cried in echo.

When they quieted, she went on, “He is returned to us in our time of need. And he brings with him our new allies in the war to come.” She turned to Daenerys, who was seated to Jon’s right. The Stark woman tilted her head, smiling—though it was a careful smile, one wrought of steel. “Welcome, Daenerys Targaryen.”

She drank from her cup, and was seated. The crowd murmured. They did not betray any happiness for this strange woman-conqueror from across the sea, only looked at her with dark and watchful eyes. It would not have been lost on them that Sansa had not greeted her as her queen.

Bran turned to his brother and said something then that Jaime could not hear. Jon’s chair scraped back against the floor.

“Thank you, Sansa,” he said, glancing down at her with something close to a smile. But his face soon fell into a pinched sort of grief, and Jaime thought unbidden of the first time he’d met the man, when he had been nothing but a brooding bastard boy with black greasy curls and a mouth that drooped open in a pout. _He never has learned how to look anything but distressed,_ thought Jaime with a wryness, but as the King in the North went on, the humor seeped out of him, and only an empty dread remained.

“I’ve grave news,” Snow said to a silent hall. “The dead have come past the Wall. They will march on us before sunrise tomorrow.”

The crowd broke out in chatter, and Jaime swallowed, nerves tossing in his stomach. His stare pitched over the room until he spotted Brienne at the front of the hall, lurking near Sansa. She did not see him, but he could see despite her ashen face she stood unmoved, guarded, strong. _Would that I had her strength. Would that I had her by me._

Jon raised his voice to speak over them. 

“We have no choice. We are the shield that guards the realms of men,” he boomed out in his thick voice. Jaime felt his chest stir.

“Now is the time to prepare. I want every commander in the war room before the hour. Smiths to their forges. Soldiers outside the wall to finish the trenches. Every woman and child who will not fight into the crypt by nightfall.”

He looked over the quiet room.

“It will not be an easy battle,” Snow said. “It will test us, test every shred of our strength, of our courage. But we will fight. We will not give in. We cannot.

“Know that we have come together.” He glanced down at the silver-haired queen at his side with obvious fondness. “That we have united to face this darkness together. That is the only way we will fight them. The only way we will defeat them, and live. Together,” he said, and he said again, louder, “Together!”

The room exploded.

“Together!” they cried, some pounding fists into the table, others standing from their chairs and raising their swords. “Together!”

“Let the dead come,” he said finally. “We will meet them.” 

When the excitement Snow had roused in the hall had at last died down, and the crowds of men filtered out, the Starks left for the war council, Brienne trailing after her lady. Jaime slunk behind their party and followed her out of the room. As if sensing him, she glanced over her shoulder as they walked, and her eyes fell on him and widened. Brienne gave a terse little shake of her head, which in spite of her seriousness Jaime found abruptly hilarious, but he ignored her, keeping at her heels as they turned into the small dark room where a map of Westeros had been spread out and pinned over a table.

Snow and Daenerys presided at the helm of the table, and around it stood the profoundly motley group of what Jaime then realized by some fall of luck or greatness represented some of the most important women and men of their age: Jon Snow, bastard of Winterfell and beloved King in the North, his chosen queen Daenerys Targaryen, by repute the liberator of Slaver’s Bay and powerful conqueror of much of Essos, proud Yohn Royce, commander of the Knights of the Vale, Tormund, the wildling leader and apparent friend of Jon Snow, Davos the Onion Knight, former Hand of Stannis Baratheon, the failed usurper, Sansa Stark, the Lady of Winterfell, and her mysterious brother and sister, Howland Reed, lord of the crannogmen, Beric Dondarrion, the Lightning Lord and nuisance from the Brotherhood Without Banners, the exiled Jorah Mormont of Bear Island, Varys the Spider, formerly the master of whispers of King’s Landing, Tyrion, his brother, Hand of the Dragon Queen, and the formidable and serious Brienne of Tarth, who had defeated the Hound in single combat, slain Stannis, and rescued Sansa Stark from the Boltons. Each had their own odd and fantastical accomplishments, but Jaime found his gaze fixed to her alone. Behind her pale white eyelashes, her astonishing blue eyes flashed up at him.

His attention snapped away from her, though, when the Mad King's daughter spoke, directing a piercing glare his way.

“Ser Jaime, am I to understand you carry me a message of betrayal?” she said.

“I carry you nothing,” he replied coolly. “I’ve given my message to Lady Sansa.” 

“I was told your sister could be believed.” Her eyes dug into him, but it was Tyrion who shifted with unease beside her.

“I apologize, your grace, I thought—” his brother started in, but Daenerys silenced him. 

“Clearly, you thought wrong.”

“A mistake,” said Tyrion.

“Yes, a mistake,” she cut back, her glare unbroken. “Why is it you are here at all? Why should you be privy to the council of this room? Does a traitor not belong in a dungeon?”

“He’s not your prisoner to sentence,” said the Stark woman. The gathered men and women looked at her. At her side, Brienne's mouth folded into a troubled frown. “He is my guest. I have already accepted him.”

Jon moved to touch his hand to Daenerys’ arm, saying, “Please,” but she spoke over him. “He is the man who murdered my father, you would defend him?”   

Sansa fell quiet. The room was tense and still.

“I killed your father, yes,” Jaime said. “He was a terrible man who killed innocents terribly. If I had to, I would do it again.” It was torture, but he made himself meet Daenerys' eyes. All these years, he had told no one the tale in full. Who would have listened? _Brienne,_ he thought, wistful. _Only Brienne._ He had let spill the truth of it to her in the baths of Harrenhal, and as he had slipped beneath a shattering wave of pain, she caught him in her arms and gently she had held him. When the fever left him, that day, and he had awoken in a room in Harren’s crumbling black tower, he found his skin scrubbed clean, and the dead, matted snarls of his hair cut away. Brienne did that. She had known how to care for him even then, when no one else could have touched him let alone release him from the loneliness that had threatened so completely to crush him. Jaime lifted his gaze from Daenerys to drift over the others in the room and found them staring, their faces open with curiosity. But they did not need his story, and they would never hear it, not from him. Perhaps, of course, perhaps—if he told it, if they knew, perhaps they would give their approval. And perhaps they wouldn’t. All he knew was that he did not desire it. Not any more.

“We cannot bicker now,” Jon intervened at last in a measured voice. “Ser Jaime has come to us with valuable information about the threat we can anticipate to the south, and an honest wish to fight beside us. We will honor that wish.”

The council stared at Daenerys, awaiting her answer. Over the silence of the room, Jaime heard his breath course in and out, softly. 

Daenerys’ eyes seemed clouded, thawed. She gave a short nod.

Jaime watched Tyrion dip his head in relief.

“When the dead arrive, their numbers will far surpass us,” Jon Snow said. “We’ll have to meet them carefully. Trenches are being prepared and will be lit by fire. These are our first line of defense, as the dead won’t quickly cross the flames. Behind that, we’ll keep our forces. We’ve brought dragonglass from the mines of Dragonstone, and with them we’ve made as many weapons as time has given us. Each man and woman shall have dragonglass. The dead will only fall to that, Valyrian steel, and fire.”

He pushed a line of markers forward on the map.

“Tormund, Beric, and Clegane, you will lead the north and wildling forces at center, and Grey Worm will lead the Unsullied at the vanguard. Royce and Lady Brienne will take the right flank with the Vale, Jorah the Dothraki at the left. Lord Howland, Arya,” he said, looking up from the map. “You and the crannogmen will have the walls.”

Daenerys placed her hand on the two chips, newly carved, that signified her dragons. She looked up at Jon. “You and I will take the skies.”

“Aye,” he said. “If we can get to the Night King and his Walkers, we have a chance of surviving. When any one of them are killed, their armies will fall.” 

They all looked on the map, where the many chips representing the army of the dead surrounded their few pieces.

Arya spoke suddenly.

“And if we fail?” she said.

Her half-brother looked up at her. Their stares moved to Snow, who stood silent and without answer. 

Bran pointed a lone, thin finger at the heart of the castle.

“The crypts,” he said. “There’s a series of passages there that lead outside the castle. I’ve used them before, once, when I was a boy. Leave me inside, with the women and children. If it comes to it, I will lead you out.”

A cloud of worry hung over them as they filed from the room. Before he could find her, Brienne disappeared down a hall, and without any other purpose or familiar place to seek out, Jaime moved down the stairs to walk along the yard beside the barracks, a grim set to his jaw. As he went, Tyrion fell into step beside him. Jaime glanced down at him, his mouth dropping open to say something, but Tyrion tugged him at the sleeve and pulled him aside into a small corridor.

“You might have told me Cersei lied. Saved me the embarrassment of failing to bring the betrayal to my queen’s notice. I thought, the child…” 

Jaime huffed, not meeting his eye. At the invocation of her name, his thoughts rushed to his beautiful, terrible sister, the way her hands had cupped her stomach and how she had smiled up at him, glowing as she always had when she was with child, but this time she had trembled. He squinted his eyes shut, that he might shut out the pain of remembering her.  
  
“She fooled me just as well. Who knows the whole truth of it. Maybe there is a child, maybe no. She was always going to lie.”

Tyrion softened. “You might have warned me you were coming,” he pressed.

“How?” said Jaime, half-annoyed. “A bird?”

“Code, perhaps? You might have used code.”

Jaime dropped down and wrapped his arms tightly around him, breathing in the familiar scent of his brother’s hair. He felt Tyrion smile into his shoulder, and a single tear fell hotly from his eye and disappeared into their embrace.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I'm honest I'm shocked that I've made it this far. here's to the 20th chapter.  
> Thank you to everyone who's come all this way with me. xx


	20. Brienne XI

Brienne’s head had not stopped pounding since Tormund had warned them, _The dead don't wait._ With each step she took, like a drum it beat and it thudded and thumped. Soon they would come, in a day, in a few turns of the hour, in a moment. When stood this close to battle, soon meant anything and nothing. _There’s no_ time  _to fear, to turn back and run,_ she reasoned while she paced behind Sansa to her solar, hoping to give herself a little comfort. _There’s only staying and fighting. Only that._ She would assume the command tasked to her— _An honor,_ she thought with a flutter, _they’ve given me command_ —and she would remain fighting until her last. But even as she repeated this to herself, her head pounded on, pounded on, and her heart knocked in her chest, hot and kicking with blood, and Brienne felt her stomach twist as the most animal fount of her insisted, in its own language, that there was always time to run, and that she should. Go away, her every nerve seemed to say, get away while you can, cross any wood or stream you must, get over any sea. Be away from this place.

As they turned into the solar off of Sansa’s chambers, an echo of footfall tumbled heavily along the corridor behind them, interrupting her thoughts. Brienne turned, her sword half drawn. At the scrape of her sword as it released from her scabbard, Sandor Clegane came to a hurried stop, his hands rearing up as though to caution a horse.

“Easy, woman,” he said. 

Seeing it was only him, Brienne breathed a sigh and sheathed her sword, but still she hesitated before Sansa, blocking the tall, lithe woman behind her with her larger frame.

“It’s all right, Lady Brienne,” said Sansa in a voice of peculiar calm. “Let him stay and speak.”

With the three of them all stood inside the solar, the grand, dark room seemed to shrink, its walls pressing in on them. Brienne had moved behind Sansa, and from there she watched the same fearsome man who had so nearly beaten her at the cliffs of the Vale reduced to a sheepish boy.

“I’d heard you had come here,” Sansa said at last. 

He dipped his head, scraggly hair shadowing his face.

“You were with Arya, before.” Brienne watched as a faint blush crept over the back of Sansa’s neck. “I mean, you protected her. She’s told me you took her safely away from the Freys.”

“Aye,” he said, simply. Some of the shyness must gone out of him, because he went on, “Might’ve been that I could have taken you safely away, too.”

“I should have gone with you, I know that now,” she said, and as she spoke Brienne heard the sadness snap in her throat. Her own chest thudded dully, and she lowered her eyes to the floor. Sansa had seen such horror. When she and Pod had found her in the woods, hounds baying and clawing at her hem, cutting those men down had been like slicing through water—swift, immediate, without thought or reason she had ended them. But the terror that Ramsay had done to her, that was already past, and Brienne knew it would be with Sansa forever. Sometimes still Brienne heard her lady cry out in the night, and her screams woke the same hate and fear in her that she had felt in woods far south of here, when Locke’s men had pushed her face first into the earth and torn at her clothes. She had howled then, howled with rage and with hurt, and still a long echo of that howl persisted within her and rang out again each time she heard Sansa scream. Those nights came less often now, but when they did Brienne would rise from her bed and go to her, gently shaking her awake. Once, the last time the night terrors had come and Brienne had stood over her telling her to stop her dreaming, Sansa’s fair hand had shot out from beneath the coverlet and grasped onto her arm. Brienne fell down onto her knees, and the women had cried and held each other and said soothing words that perhaps meant nothing until the night ended and light came again into the sky. _Can this really be what we will endure, after so much pain,_ thought Brienne. _Can it really be that we will all die tomorrow, after this, after everything?_

“You couldn’t have known all that, little bird,” Sandor said finally, and Sansa bowed her head. 

“Little bird,” she said haltingly, as though tasting the words. “I haven’t heard that name in some time. I’m afraid I’ve fewer songs to sing, now.”

“Aye, you’ve grown,” he said, his voice rasping with some emotion he seemed to struggle to let free. “I doubt you’ve forgotten your pretty tales, though.”

“No,” said Sansa, and from where she stood Brienne could imagine the sad smile that she might have worn. “I’ve not forgotten them. Sweet tales I would have wanted for my life.”

They regarded each other a long while, and something passed between them, something Brienne could not entirely know. But she did recognize something of it. _He loves her,_ she thought of a sudden, and she found she was not bewildered by it. Still, it refrained in her mind, a quiet little chorus, _Loves her, he loves her._

Sansa cleared her throat. “Arya killed them, you know. For that. For the wedding.”

Laughter passed over the Hound’s face, but his mouth betrayed only the smallest smile. He scraped a rough hand along his jaw. “Did she? The cold little bitch. I heard some tell of the Freys dropping dead, might’ve known it was her.”

Sansa smiled. “But you haven’t come to me to hear all this.”

“No,” he agreed.

“Why have you come?”

To Brienne’s equal surprise, they watched as he drew his sword from his hip and held it out before he knelt awkwardly, laying the steel over the floor. He looked up at her through the split of his dark hair.

“Let me serve you. Let me protect you, this time.”

“I have Brienne,” said Sansa, her voice small. 

Something like a guffaw caught in his mouth. “And let her go on serving you, do I care?” He had spoken roughly, but as she looked between them, his heavy brow drawn into folds, Brienne saw that in the light of the hearth his eyes were soft and his mouth hitched as though in pain.

“You would swear it?” Brienne intervened, and he nodded his head at her.  

“Yes, I’d bloody swear it,” he said, but there was no malice in it. Sansa breathed out. 

“Then swear.”

The Hound dropped his eyes, falling quiet. In the absence of his vows, Sansa stepped forward from where she stood, alighting a small hand on his shoulder. It was not so long ago that Sansa had answered Brienne in her own oaths of fealty. These she swore again now to Sandor, more surely than she had that day in the frozen wood, and Brienne’s chest swelled with pride to hear her say them. It was not often done in this order, she understood, but perhaps he would be led into it. 

The two women looked to Sandor, waiting. 

“I give myself to the Starks,” he intoned, lowly. “I’ll shield your back and keep your counsel and give my life for yours, if need be.”

He lifted his gaze to Sansa. “I swear it,” he said. “By the Old Gods and the New."

“Stand,” she said. And Sandor arose, sheathing his sword at his hip.

“Brienne,” Sansa said, “please take a message to Maester Wolkan for my uncle Edmure in Riverrun. He’s to inform Edmure and all his bannermen in Riverlands of the movements of the dead and of Cersei’s deceit. Tell him we will soon require every man and woman who can fight. Remind them Arya Stark has freed them from the Lannisters. If we survive this war, they’ll have their revenge, and everything that was ever broken, we’ll remake again.” 

Brienne dipped her head, her hand resting at the pommel of her sword. “Yes, my lady,” she said, and she turned quickly from the room and left them. As she did, she heard the scrape of feet over the floor, and after, the sudden silence of an embrace. 

Heat rushed to her face, and her head now roared with the thick throb of blood as she thought again, _Loves her, he loves her._  Brienne made herself repeat Sansa’s message below her breath to remember it. A strong message, but then that was Sansa. She led with the cunning of love. When Brienne found Wolkan in the library, she gave Sansa's message word for word and saw him write it across several scrolls. Satisfied, Brienne went, but as she made her way down the corridor she paused, realizing she ought not return to Sansa’s chambers for some time. Aimless, she drifted through the halls until it occurred to her that she might pass the remainder of the afternoon with the men in the sparring yard. When she arrived there, though, she found only a few still driving at their paces. Everyone else had gone away, perhaps to drink, perhaps to be alone. Brienne passed a hand over her face, rubbing at the ache in her brow.

It was Ser Yohn Royce she at last discovered in the great hall with a few of the other Vale men close to him. Together they spoke awhile about the battle, drawing their fingers over the grain of the table to demonstrate movements the men might take. A push of their flank there. A way to fall back to here. Until eventually Royce clasped her on the shoulder and the Vale men left, leaving her alone again with the pounding, pounding of her head.

Outside the hall, the light was fading, and snow swirled about in tight, angry whorls. Some Stark men came to drag away the tables, and the room soon was empty but for a few chairs and the roar of the hearth. _This will be where some of the men fall back to, should we lose the walls,_ Brienne thought grimly, looking about herself. She did not have much love for the north—while living at Winterfell in Sansa’s service she had often thought of her rocky, green isle of Tarth, of her father who was at the twilight of his days, and she had missed it with more lucid desperation than she had ever before in her life. But there had been happy moments within the Stark's great hall, a few anyway that she had been privy to. To imagine it as it perhaps would soon be, shuttered with men cowering inside while the dead gnawed at their army, rocked over her like a dark and cold wave. 

“Thought you went off hiding from me,” said a voice suddenly, and Brienne looked up to see the wildling man, Tormund, grin at her from behind a bushy red beard.

Her stomach dropped. “No,” she said, dumbly.

He sniffed at the air, taking up the seat beside her. “I like the time before a great battle. Don’t you?”

With effort, Brienne straightened her neck. “Not particularly.”

“Brienne,” said Tormund. “Can I call you that? Your people have strange ways with names.” She gave a slight nod. He parsed a hand through his whiskers, thinking. Outside, the winds picked up and blew, and a faint whistle carried through the hall. A kind of sympathy came into the man’s voice. “I’ve fought the dead before. I’ve seen strong men fall to them, and I’ve seen stronger men turn and run.” 

She swallowed, her eyes drifting over the floor. She ran her tongue over her lips, finding the skin there chapped and dry.

“Do you think we—do we have any chance?” she heard herself ask him.

He seemed to consider that. 

“Dunno,” he said, rolling his shoulders beneath his furs. “It’ll be a hard fight.” He leaned forward toward her. “Why not come with me, now? Spend the night with me. We can fuck—” the word made her wince, though she was embarrassed to, “—and we can fight them together.”

His proposition hung between them for a beat, but Brienne stood from her chair, shaking her head once.

“Thank you, no,” she said. “You’re to be at center, and I’ll be at the right flank.” _With Jaime,_ she thought with a suddenness that surprised her.

Disappointment washed over the big ginger man’s features. He sunk down into his fur collar, and his mouth had opened to say something more when Jaime, Tyrion, and Podrick came into the room.

“Ser Jaime,” she said loudly, turning to face him. It was everything she had to make herself meet his perplexed glance. “A word?”

 

 


	21. Brienne XII

As they walked down the narrow corridor off of the great hall, their footsteps clanging against the stones and beating in her ear, Brienne felt all too aware of the lack of conversation they were exchanging. Mercifully, she strode two steps ahead of him so she did not have to confront that puzzled look she was certain he still bore. At last though they had come away from the hall, and she stopped before a large shuttered window, turning round to face him. She drew in a breath, but when she did turn to look at him, she found him regarding her softly, with none of the familiar mocking hanging about his eyes.

“It’s cold,” he said simply, his gaze drifting to the window.

“Well, I wanted to be away,” she said, though he was right, she’d brought them far from the warmth of the hearth stones and the fire blazing in it. Had she not been wearing her armor, she might have wrapped her arms around herself. As it was she stood with her arms hanging limply at her sides, her fists clutching at air.

“Did you,” said Jaime.

“Look,” Brienne said, shifting on her feet. Her toes felt wet in their stockings. A chill crept along the back of her neck. “If tonight is my last night in this world, I want to spend it…not with them.”

“Not alone?” His voice was little louder than a breath.

Her stomach lurched traitorously. Despite herself, she thought of his naked shoulders in her arms, the torchlight in his hair, the rise of steam off of water. _Is that—what I want?_ Tormund’s word, _fuck_ , reverberated then in her head, and unwilling her thoughts drifted to the boys who had toyed with her in her girlhood, how they had spun her in their arms and sniggered to one another when they couldn’t keep the game going any longer. An ugly rash of heat bloomed over her face, and she bit down hard on her cheek. Tormund had wanted her for true, she wasn’t naïve enough to think otherwise, but the thought of what Jaime might presume from her now, what he might think she desired, how he might deny her—that she was sure she could not bear. She wasn’t even certain what she wanted, beyond to be with him awhile.

She gritted out, “Not alone.”

Something folded across Jaime’s face. _Pity?_ Her mouth parted open to elaborate a complaint, defend herself, argue with him, but he interrupted her thoughts by swinging an exaggerated glance around the hall.

“We’ll need some wine, then,” he said, more to the stones of the corridor walls than to her. When he met her eyes again, she was relieved to see a slight smile waver over his lips. “The kitchens?”

By the time they reached the abandoned kitchens, Jaime had her near doubled over in gusts of laughter. The ache in her temples had subsided somewhat, or perhaps that had only been drowned away by the winds of reckless elation that wracked through her as Jaime prattled about something or other while sweeping a wineskin from beneath a table with his left hand. Though they had likely only deprived the cook from her stock wine she reserved for stews or the occasional swig, some part of her felt what they were doing was wrong in the childish sort of way she had often felt in the lows of her belly when she was a girl in Evenfall Hall, getting into mischief.

“She won’t miss it for a nonce, she won’t miss it,” Jaime was saying, whispering for play, and another gale of laughter came tumbling from her. She couldn’t explain this euphoria rushing its way through her, felt, at the edge of her laugh, the sharp, bright point of fear waiting for her if she dared try. So she only followed behind him, pushing her fingers shakily through her fringe of hair. 

When they’d come to the twist of corridors that led off to the great hall or up the stair to the Starks’ chambers, Jaime hesitated, and Brienne’s breath caught in her throat.

“That way,” she made herself say, nodding up at the steps curving away to darkness, and Jaime went up them. She followed, absurdly. The stairs seemed to climb on forever.

When they reached her door, she said, “Here.” The coals she had left in her small hearth had long gone cold. She stooped over them, stirring up a new flame, and she fed some kindling into the fire before she straightened and turned to look at him. Her chamber was modestly sized and even more modestly decorated. She had a small table and only one chair, and a great wooden wardrobe that was empty of dresses leaned dejectedly in the corner across from her bed. Jaime and Brienne stood in the room’s center, before the hearth. 

He uncorked the skin with his teeth and spat the offending stopper at their feet. Brienne felt the urge to laugh again, but the chuckle died in her throat, and instead she strangled out a single sigh. Jaime offered the skin to her, and she put it to her lips and drank. She offered it back. He held it a bit awkwardly, supporting the sag of the skin with his golden hand, but he drank as well. Behind them, the fire sputtered and cracked into life.

“Thank gods it’s warmer in here than the barracks,” Jaime complained. “I thought I’d die in the night.” 

He held the wine out to her, but she did not take it.

“Jaime,” she said, and he looked at her. The world seemed to slow. “I’ve never fought in a true battle, before. Not like…this.”

“I don’t think many of us have,” he answered. His voice was soft.

Any elation she had felt had coiled away and gone. In its place was the same dread from before, and the insistent pounding in her skull had come again, drumming, thudding. She found his eyes, his muddied green eyes, that in this light seemed impossibly to glow. 

“When they’re here, when we fight,” she said, with effort, “I don’t want you—to leave my side.” 

And his hand was suddenly pulling her to him, his lips crashing over hers, and she was kissing him back, not breathing. After a moment, though, he pulled his face away from hers. His left hand had worked its way into her hair, and he gripped her there, not ungently.

“I, is,” he began, but Brienne reached out for him and pressed herself to him, silencing him with a kiss.

Blood sang in her ears as he opened his mouth to her, and at his lips’ insistence, she parted hers for him. His tongue swept over her own, and she felt her knees threaten to buckle, but he moved his right arm around her waist and held her. _I’m strong enough,_ he’d said once, and heat roared along her spine at the memory. He strayed from her lips, dropping kisses along her neck. His leg had come between hers, and she felt him firm against her leather skirts as he pressed into her embrace.

“This armor,” he breathed into the skin at her neck, driving a shudder through her. “I’d have it off you.”

Harder than she meant, she planted a hand on his chest and pushed, sending him staggering back a step. With ragged breaths he watched her while she moved her fingers to her fastenings. Shakily, she loosened them, and piece by piece she removed the armor, blue armor, blue as her eyes, that he had given her in King’s Landing. When she came to the belt about her waist, her eyes caught on the sword’s perfect hilt. In the meager light of her room, its rubies glistened blackly and seemed to burn. All this time, he’d accompanied her, in a way. She did not know how to say it. She did not know that she could. Brienne undid the belt and carried it and the sword in its scabbard to set it on the table, where the wine skin laid, forgotten. 

She turned back to him, seeing that he hadn’t moved. His chest heaved up and down, and he was stricken. Timid, now, she went to him, and with uncertain fingers she undid the fastens of the Stark armor he wore about his neck and shoulders. It was simple plating, far more plain than the Lannister sort she’d seen him wear before. It suited him, she thought, this plain, dark armor, though anything might have suited him. 

When at last they stood without their armor, they regarded one another in silence. Jaime stepped toward her. Gently he looped his arms around her waist and tugged her to him. They kissed, this time with fevered slowness, Brienne following his movements as she might follow him with a sword in her hand, watching, experimenting, returning in kind. Eventually, his hands crept below her jerkin, tugging to get under the linen chemise beneath it, and while he fumbled there she found the skin at his jaw and kissed it. He stirred at that, sighing out into her hair. As if in answer, a warmth throbbed almost painfully between her legs. She broke apart from him, pulling her laces loose and shrugging the jerkin off. Hesitantly, she reached out to tug his apart as well before he lifted it and his chemise off with it.

He reached to her, attempting with his one hand to undo the linen ties at her neck. While he concentrated, she watched him, then, stirring from her daze, she caught his fingers in hers, stilling them. His eyes darted up to her face, but not wanting to meet whatever look would be within them, she pulled the shirt over her head and dropped it to the ground between them. With the heat of the fire and Jaime’s gaze upon her bare skin, she thought she might burn away, leaving nothing behind but scorched air. Her eyes sought the floor. 

“If you,” she started to say, but no other words came.

Jaime’s hand drifted through her hair, behind her ear, under her jaw.

“Brienne,” he said, “please.”

Tears sprung into her eyes, and to not let him see them, she pressed herself into his arms. The abrupt softness of his skin against hers was maddening; as he steered her backward onto her bed, Brienne felt lost in it, lost in him, lost in this great trembling thing between them. She sunk her head back, her eyes shut and seeing only blackness as his mouth moved over her lips, her ear, her throat, the white jags of skin at her neck where a bear once had caught her with its claws. He trailed a line of hungered kisses down her chest, lingering at a breast and lapping a quick tongue over it before dipping away, down, until his leg pried between her thighs and he pulled and pushed at her breeches and stockings. Cool air stung her briefly, until he breathed over her thigh and kissed her there, his tongue jutting over her and into her until bright pricks of joy erupted so sharply within her she thought she might scream. Mutely she twisted and twitched beneath him, her hips hitching up, and as she did she felt him moan against her.

Jaime sank down over her, but she was pulling him, pulling him up, up so that she could have his mouth, which she seized, tasting her wetness on his lips. He moaned again at that, a low and strangled sort of sound, and she blinked her eyes open, running a hand along the small of his back. She could feel him pressed against her, and it was alluringly strange, a strange and heady thing to feel his desire. 

“You’re sure?” he breathed.

“Yes,” she said, arching up to kiss him, and he pulled himself forward and pushed into her, slowly. He was raised on his good arm, the other pressing lightly against the bed. She felt him strain and quiver as he joined her. Vaguely, there was pain. Brienne shut her eyes, feeling out in the darkness for the fullness of the sensation.

“Mm,” he hummed distraughtly, and his arm bent and fell at the elbow. “Turn,” he said, “Turn with me.”

She followed him as he twisted himself to fall under her, and she hesitated, uncertain, above him, but he stole a kiss at her jaw, his arms coming round to her waist, her ass. With his left hand he felt at the juncture of her thighs and ran a finger along her slick.

“Ah,” she breathed in pleasure and surprise, and he pulled her down onto him. Her knees pressed in at his sides, and she sank down into his thrusts, their chests meeting and her lips moving desperately together until she heard herself cry out, and her name tumbled out of him, again and again, “Brienne.”

For a long while after, they lay twined in each other’s arms, not saying anything, their hearts pounding together. But as the cold seeped again into the room, a chill ran over her limbs, and she shuddered against him. The fire had burned low. Outside, the sky was black and without stars. Brienne disentangled herself from him, crossing the room to retrieve her chemise and pulling it over her head. The linen brushed roughly against her skin as she bent and stoked the fire. She couldn't have known how rough linen would feel after she had touched Jaime’s skin. An absurd thought ran through her— _I’ll never feel a thing so fine again in my life._

“Where are you going?” he protested in a drowsy voice.

She looked at him, this long, bare man lying across her bed. _Half a god,_ she had thought in the baths at Harrenhal, but she had been wrong. Men die. Brienne climbed down beside him and pulled the furs over them. He ran his arm along her side, then gripped her there at the waist, squeezing her. She shut her eyes and knocked her brow softly against his, and she did not want to leave.

 

 


	22. Jaime XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a longer chunk than usual, but I wanted to keep things together as tightly as I could with this chapter and the one that follows it. More on its way soon! For now though I hope you enjoy.

Beside him, Brienne dozed.

As she slept, she had her arms folded against herself, her hands pressed together as though in prayer. Briefly, he wondered whether she believed in all that. The woman had a streak of cynicism that cut through her pure and hard as a gash of mineral through stone, he knew. But it was the other, more unlikely thing about her, her unflagging devotion to all she held as good and right, what he might’ve once thought of as innocence but might have also more correctly called strength—that was what he’d long admired. Of course, when he had been a boy cluttering up the shadows of the likes of Ser Barristan the Bold and Ser Arthur Dayne, he had wanted nothing more than to live among the songs, and in the songs the knights were honorable and strong. All those knights had perished, though, every last one but for him, and the boy who had believed in them died knowing life was decidedly not a song. But Brienne, she was true. She was the truest thing he knew. And she was here, at the end of the world, beside him.

He couldn’t help but marvel at her, this improbable woman. In her nakedness, she was severe and soft all at once, as bizarrely beautiful as she’d been the first time he had seen her. Just the memory of the baths made his cock stir, and his breath caught in his throat thinking of it. Jaime might have reached out right then and touched her, woken her, pleaded with her to make love to him this one more time. But he couldn’t make himself disturb her, not now when she looked so peaceful, not now when he scarcely believed that she lay with him. He did not want to end this dream they seemed to be sharing.

Again he tried to fathom it, the brittle look in her eyes as she had asked “for a word,” the way she’d let him ply her with nonsense as they swept through the kitchens of Winterfell looking for wine, the flicker of firelight moving over her in the heat of her room, how she’d said she didn’t want him to leave her side, how he’d stepped in and kissed her, at that, and how she’d let him. And how he’d wanted to. And how long he’d wanted to, all this time, not knowing. But now the want coursed through him, a heady current that Jaime couldn’t seem to pick himself out of. He could be carried by it a long time, he thought. He could wash right out of time itself.

While he lay next to her, his heart beating too quickly for sleep, Jaime’s thoughts drifted to the crannog girl and what she said about her dream. For several moons, she had dreamt of that and that only. A vague curiosity settled through him. Was he bound, somehow, to follow Brienne? Despite himself, Jaime felt out over the darkness to brush his fingers along her shoulder. _Where_ , he thought, _where will you lead me?_

At his touch, her eyes blinked open. He watched as her hand dragged the furs up to cover the shoulder he’d just touched. Frowning, he moved his fingers over hers and clutched them. In the dark, a blush spread out over her face.

“Don’t,” he heard himself murmur.

“We should get up,” she said in the graveled voice he recognized as the one she used when she felt afraid. “Get dressed. It’s been too long already.”

“Kiss me first,” he complained.

“Jaime, I—”

“You heard.”

Brienne hesitated. Jaime breathed out a shallow laugh, though her pause disturbed him.

“You began this,” he said, “Are you that easily sated?” 

With excruciating slowness, she tipped her face toward him in answer, though this time as her lips found his Jaime felt her eyes upon him. It was a brief, chaste kiss. When she pulled away again, and he regarded her. Her eyes were wide, her serious features cast in shadow. Something stirred in his stomach.

“All right, all right,” he said then, his gaze travelling away from her. “Up you get.”

She slipped out from the covers and with her back turned to him began pulling on her clothes. After a long moment, he sighed and went to her. As he wrapped his arms around her and the chill of the room touched his bare skin, he turned to gooseflesh. Brienne straightened and went very still.

When they laid camp in the barrowlands, at the mouth of the river Fever, he had asked to fight under her command. He had been granted that. Hungrily, though, it occurred that it would not be enough for him, not now. 

“I won’t leave you,” he promised into her clothes. _Not again and not ever._

They had dressed again in their armors and cloaks and walked the length of the wing, winding down away through the halls to emerge out under a starless sky. Jaime’s eyes lifted to the torches at the northern parapets. The flames flickered and licked up into the blackness as a wind sluiced through them. Winterfell seemed to wait, listening. Jaime thought of saying some idle joke Tyrion had told him once, but then there was a racket at the gate, and the thought died. 

Above them, they heard the guards call to one another.

“Rider returning,” they yelled, and the great wooden doors cracked open. A crannog scout skittered into the yard on a pale lean mare. Jaime recognized him in the darkness. It was Kerill, Howland’s man.

“Ready the forces,” the man shouted into the night. His mare stepped sideways, her eyes white with fear.

As if in answer, a lone horn blew. Brienne tensed beside him. A second horn sounded then, morose and long. He looked at her. Her face was like stone, though he could see some thought ripple beneath it. All around him, guardsmen and soldiers and knights and wildling women carrying swords of dragonglass began to flow out over the yard. Podrick appeared from the doors of the great hall, a dragonglass sword of his own swinging at his hip. He ran toward them, and as he did, a third and last horn rang out.

There was nothing orderly about the moments before a battle. There never was. Jaime had seen it a hundred times before, the men pitching their stomachs onto their boots, the kettles of stew spilling over cookfires, the pounding of feet searching the ground for their positions. Before he had ever gone into a battle of his own, his father told him to expect as much. _Fear makes men stupid_ , Tywin had said in a voice so careworn that Jaime remembered it still. _The trick is to make them forget the animals that they are. Get the drummers playing at their drums and the banner boys flying the banners, and remind the men of their lines. Otherwise they’ll never go to slaughter._ The crassness of it all had shocked him as a boy, but he’d since learned the use of duty. Now, though, the horror of what was coming rocked over him anew. Here, there’d be no drummers, no children tilting the banners of great lords they’d never know. No, this was death, only death.

“With me,” Brienne said, and Pod and Jaime followed her as more men fell in behind them. “Valemen,” she was shouting, “Vale! With me! To the right flank!”

Royce had come striding out on a stocky grey destrier, the mounted Knights of the Vale riding beside him in a blur of muscle and hooves. The others though were hers to command, and they ran with her through the castle grounds to pour out of the small gate to the east.

As they formed their lines, all around them the thousands of women and men fell into position, Daenerys’ foreign host of Unsullied at the center front, with Tormund, his wildlings, and the northmen behind them. At the left flank, the Dothraki horde shifted on their horses, crude araks of dragonglass held in their fists. The crannogmen would be at the battlements with arrows and spears, and somewhere high above them, in the clouds perhaps, were Snow and his dragon queen.

There had been shouting and the thudding of hooves before, but now they had fallen quiet, and only the wind called.

Chains rattled as the portcullis of the north gate rose. Jaime strained over his collar to look, but he saw only the parting of men as someone stepped through their ranks.

“ _Dovaogedys_ ,” a distant voice called, and strange orders followed. The Unsullied beat their spears into the snow. Their shields clashed against their chests as they stood aside, and out of their formation walked the lone figure of the priestess, garbed in red. She stepped beyond the lines of men and their torches, and Jaime lost sight of her in the darkness. Though none could see her any longer, Brienne and Podrick peered too. 

Far out before their armies where the trenches had been dug, a sudden flare of light burst forward, and the red woman appeared again, a small dark smudge against the flames which roared into life around her. Brienne’s breath drew in sharply as they watched the blaze spread to edges of their vision.

That drove a cry from the thousands. All around him, men lifted their swords as the night burned back. Jaime felt the strangled little cord of hope snap through him while the shouting carried out over the cold air. 

But then, from the darkness, the black wave of them came rushing, plunging, swarming forward, their horrible grasping figures now lit by the high column of flames, and beside him Podrick stumbled back. 

The army of the dead surged into the fire, rankless, lineless, spilling endlessly out of the night. Jaime watched with horror as they ran, their bodies twisting where they met the flames. A chattering, cackling sound came from them, like the sound of bones breaking upon bones. They did not scream.

The red woman disappeared behind the Unsullied forces. At their helm the leader Grey Worm shouted, and they turned the points of their spears forward.

So many hundreds had piled into the flaming trench, a few climbed over the bodies that bridged it. One broke into the vanguard of the Unsullied. Another. A hole tore into the field of men. Jaime felt his stomach twist. They were coming now, running at the right, their bright eyes gleaming. 

“Stand your ground,” Brienne shouted. 

She’d drawn her sword. Beside her, Jaime drew out Widow’s Wail.

He knew the smells of war, the shit and the guts turned outward to stew and curdle and bake in the air. That was putrid, but you could stiffen your senses to it, somewhat, you could go away inside. But as the army of the dead piled through the flames and the few stole over the burned bodies and loped forward toward them, a great swell of stink came with them—a stench so strong that it struck him before the first had even broken into their lines. It stung into his nostrils sharp as a wound, and Jaime near doubled over to retch. _This is madness,_ he thought, hefting his sword higher. _This is death._

The first of the wights fell to their steel, the Valyrian blades slicing down through empty flesh from which no blood came. Behind him, a Valeman stumbled in his footing and cried out as he tried to fight one of them off, and Brienne whipped around to strike the dead thing down. Jaime reached out his golden hand to the startled soldier—a boy, he saw, really only a child—and wrenched on his arm. “Get up,” he said, “Come on, get up.” The young soldier climbed back to his feet, and another wight broached their lines, and another, and they met them fighting, their stomachs clenched, their teeth gritting down and grinding.

At the center of the field a chorus of battle screams pealed out horribly, and Jaime looked up to see a flood of the dead come tearing past the trench and rush toward them.

Brienne lifted Oathkeeper high and screamed.

The dead crashed into them then, and everything was confused. All around, the Knights of the Vale rode forward on their mounts, and steel and dragonglass drove at darkness, the throttled voices of the dead mixing with the cries of men falling. A wave of them surged up over a white horse and downed it, its knight hitting the ground beside Jaime with a sickening crunch before being dragged by the kicking animal as it tried to buck and flee. Vaguely, far off, Jaime heard the chortling yells of the Dothraki riders, but that was soon drowned by the sounds of the dying.

A wight pulled at his right arm, and he hacked it down only for another to come in its place. Jaime spun round, driving his blade forward. As he did he saw Brienne bring her sword clashing down against two of them, her hair flung out around her head like a flame, her eyes wide and round.

A gust of wind swept up along the ground and tumbled into him so hard Jaime thought for a moment he lost his breath. With it came a sudden veil of snow falling so thick and white he could scarcely see beyond where he stood. The hands of the dead reached for him through the storm, and he whirled, screaming, cutting.

“Brienne,” he cried, because he could no longer see her.

A corpse of a woman fell toward him out of the snow, her knife flashing in the night. He staggered back a step, and she pushed the point into his arm.

He shoved a boot into her leg and drove his steel down through her head. It opened with a crack.

“Brienne,” he screamed again, searching. 

Her voice wailed in answer, and she hammered her way through the darkness, felling two of them at once to reach him. Jaime blinked the snow from his eyes, panting. Podrick was at her back, striking down a long dead child.

 _How can we fight them,_ he wanted to scream, but another three poured out at them through the hellish melee, and Brienne and Jaime spun to beat them back. It was without end, this tumult of dead. While they were easier to kill than any soldier, they didn’t have the fear that you could cow a man with. They did not even seem to have the bloodlust that Jaime knew. They only wanted forward, forward. They were unthinking as a deluge, as a great and crashing flood. When a war was won, men surrendered, threw down their swords, turned and ran back for their ground. But these were not men. Not anymore. And they would not follow the laws of a heart that still rushed with blood and fear and love.

“Jaime,” Brienne cried as she freed her sword from a corpse. “Look there.”

He looked. Coming toward them was a tall, severe thing that looked to be made of glass and seemed older than time itself. He rode on a horse whose ribs were so open to the air the winds and snow blew through them. 

 _What_ is  _that,_ Jaime thought, his heart turning icy with fear. A sluggish feeling came over him as he stared. He felt he might not be able to move from where he stood.

“One of the Walkers,” Brienne answered for him. “If we can…”

Jaime looked at her, stricken.

But already she was charging forward, and Podrick was following after her, the two of them cutting through the dead, and Jaime was struggling behind them, protecting them at their backs. As they moved toward the White Walker, a writhing wake of bodies both stale and bloodied fell around them. The thing jerked its head, eyes of ice seeking them. Seeing Brienne and her charge, it lifted a shining greatsword. 

Above them, over the center of the field, the dark wings of dragons appeared at last out of the whirling snow, and gusts of flame drove down onto the dead, burning them in driving lines. The Walker looked, too, and at that moment Podrick ran at the undead mount, cutting his obsidian blade into its legs. The horse made a strangled sort of scream as it pitched forward at the knees, and its rider slipped smoothly from it, falling like snow from a branch. 

Pod stumbled sideways, his hand coming away from the horse without a blade. The young squire tripped and ran and scooped up a dead knight’s dragonglass sword, striking down one of the dead before it could reach Brienne. Jaime heard his breath course out in ragged heaves. A wight lurched for him, and his sword bit into it, then with a sweep he felled another before he twisted, watching.

The blue-eyed monster walked toward them, clasping his greatsword of ice. He drew the terrible blade out and Jaime’s ears rang with the sound of hoarfrost bursting.

With a cry, Brienne met it, Oathkeeper singing where metal strained against ice. Jaime watched as her footing gave and she shoved up, pushing the great blade back only to drive her steel forward, cutting down with fevered strength. The swords kissed and rang again, and the force of the Walker’s blow sank Brienne down, grasping.

“Ah- _ah_ ,” she screamed, falling, her arms flinging out into the snow, and Jaime froze.

But when the Walker raised its greatsword once more to bring it crashing down upon her, Brienne twisted where she knelt, her blade meeting the ice and fiercely biting it back. In the seconds the parry had afforded her, she lunged to her feet, Oathkeeper swinging out black and shining, and it fell into the Walker’s side.

A shattering of ice exploded into the air and fell all around her where she staggered back, panting, and suddenly there was the sound of thousands of bodies collapsing, their bones and ragged flesh dropping hard and empty to the ground. Jaime swung his head around and saw through the lashing snow that for perhaps a mile the dead had fallen at the right flank.

He heard himself scream with disbelief and joy. Podrick joined him, half-laughing, and from far away he saw Beric turn with his flaming sword, and the wildling Tormund whipped his ginger head around to see what had happened, and more of the men at center had turned also, looking their way. Just then a burst of dragonfire rained a column of flames down on the dead, illuminating the field and washing the lone, tall figure of Brienne of Tarth in a glow of golden light. A powerful cry rose up from the hosts of the living.

“Come on!” yelled Jaime, his sword raised, and Brienne, Podrick, and the Valemen that remained ran together toward the center, where they flowed to join the wildling and northern forces.

More dragonfire came quenching down through the storm, burning back the horde of the dead while they fought. It became mindless, thoughtless, his blade lashing out and beating down and sweeping death and more death under him.

 _We’ll win,_ he thought absently. _If we can kill the rest of the Walkers, we’ll win._ He scanned the field for another of the mounted White Walkers, and saw them at center and left, a row of riders hidden amongst the waves of dead still rolling forward.

It was this thought that he carried when blue flames shot down from the sky and burned through the Dothraki riders in a breath, this thought that withered into terror as a third dragon dove out of the clouds, and the beasts screamed, their wings thrashing into each other. This thought as Jaime saw the great black one veer off and disappear into the white, this thought as the dead dragon and the other collided above them and fell, crashing into the earth. The tail of Rhaegal smacked into the snow, its tip nearly catching him where it collapsed. Jaime stumbled back a step. 

For a moment, the storm swelled to a still. Then, from the wreckage of dragons, the Night King stood, his eyes of ice burning.

 

 


	23. Brienne XIII

As she looked on, the plummeting snow slowed to a stop in the air, the many flakes abruptly abating and floating down in fat, drowsy clusters, and the winds that had been rushing in her ears so loud and so long she had since ceased noticing dropped away to a low whisper. Perhaps because of how rough-worn her ears had gotten, the world seemed to echo strangely, like water sloshing in a cave. Her own breath sounded as though it were outside herself and many miles away.

If the…thing she had slain was fearsome, the one Jon Snow called their King was something beyond that, something beyond the touch of time. He stood without moving while the snow came down around him, his eyes at once empty and searching, and he had a stillness to him that Brienne shuddered to feel ripple through her in kind. 

It might have lasted the breadth of a second, or it might have lasted a thousand years, but when the great fallen beasts writhed and separated on the ground, their wings scraping the earth and their weight shifting with thundering slowness, and out from their dark, tangled mass lurched the body of Jon Snow, the Night King’s gaze twitched toward him, and Brienne’s rapture was broken. In that instant, the snow whirled down as fiercely as before, scoring the air with the noise of falling, falling, and though they couldn’t have stood more than a few lengths on, Brienne had to hold her arm out over her eyes to see them.

Lightened of their riders, the two dragons leapt into the sky, and the wind hastened by their wings stole the air out of her lungs. At the fringes of their now battered lines, the dead pressed in around them once more, but their tumult seemed diminished, as though whatever dark magic that drove them forward had slipped into an unfocused hang. With the resumed onslaught of the dead, Brienne was barred from drawing any nearer to the Night King or to Jon, but only just. The Night King seemed distracted, almost, the battering strength of his army slowed for the moment. _Perhaps we can break through the dead,_ Brienne thought, _perhaps help Snow. If he fells their king, it will all be over._ Nearby, she saw the swing of Beric’s blazing sword, and over the battle she heard Tormund scream out and swear. She knew Pod was there, too, fighting well. But beside her, ever beside her, was Jaime and the longsword which was twin to hers, hacking down through the darkness with her. Between blows, she managed, “Jon—in there—can you see?” 

“Barely,” he exhaled.

“We have to get through to him,” she said, and he gave no more than a brisk nod of assent before they pushed forward together, shouldering past the dead. At the corners of her vision, she could see Pod thrust his blade forward, too, and Tormund and Beric and a mix of their hosts advanced with them, routing a clot of wights out of the way. Grey Worm appeared beside them in his helm, though his spear was long lost, a blade of dragonglass cutting forward in its place.

When they had fought past the dead ringing them, she heard the clash of swords and, above that, Jon’s startled cries. She brought Oathkeeper down hard onto a wight, splintering it to her feet, and once it fell she saw him, his dark hair flung about his face, his sword held low as he staggered back from a blow while the Night King advanced on him, a greatsword of ice like the other had wielded gleaming in his hand. But as they appeared behind Snow, their own swords raised and ready to run at his back to support him, the Night King hesitated, halting where he stood. His eyes, Brienne saw as his stare suddenly burned into her, were shaped like seven-pointed stars.

Something like a smile curved over the thing’s mouth. He lowered the frozen blade, and he turned his left hand at the wrist so that his fingers with their daggered tips opened up at the sky. A confused dread swelled in Brienne’s heart. _What is happening?_

“No,” shouted Jon, but already the Night King was slowly dragging his hand up through the air to raise it, and all around her the fallen bodies of the northmen, wildlings, men of the Vale, and Unsullied soldiers began to shift where they lay twisted and broken on the ground, their eyes flashing open and shining blue.

“No, no,” she said in echo, faltering back a step. All around them the newly dead were climbing to their feet. 

“Fall back,” Jon cried, “fall back!”  
  
As the ground teemed anew with the dead, the armies of the living broke into a panic and ran for the castle walls, a great many shouts rising up from them to lift the gates. The Night King was surrounded by them now; they were spilling around him, walking and then running forward, until there were so many that she could no longer see the pale figure hewn of ice. Brienne’s heart pounded in her ears.

“Protect the retreat,” the Unsullied leader commanded. To the haggard few hundred of his army that remained, he yelled something more in a tongue Brienne did not know, and while everything else turned to chaos around them, the Unsullied spilled seemingly without effort into a line that stretched over a wide swath of ground, their shields rippling into a wall of steel, their spears thrust out in defense. She watched in horror as men and women who not an hour before had fought and fallen beside them now inched forward and plunged themselves onto the spears with as little natural restraint as the others had before when they piled into the flaming trench.

Jaime’s right arm looped through the crook of her elbow and wrenched back hard.

“To the walls! Get back to the walls!” she heard him shout.

Then she was running, they all were running, the one called Gendry, and Tormund, and Beric, and Davos, and Snow, and Podrick, and Jaime. As she and the others turned through the gate and ran up the walls to the battlements, Jaime’s hand was at her back, not exactly guiding but pushing her, shoving her, making her feet move forward when all she wanted to do was stay, stare. It was only when they reached the high parapets looking out over the north field that his touch fell away, and a great shudder wracked through her.

“Archers!”

The men and women dipped their arrows into the braziers, and along the walls of Winterfell a chain of light bloomed in the darkness, a dizzying line of miniature stars.

“Nock!”

Brienne watched as the last of their surviving men retreated behind the castle gate.

“Draw!”

The Unsullied were edging back, their spears still tilted to the dead, their shields held high. Some slipped behind the gate, but their lines were too far spread.

“Loose,” cried Howland from beside her.

A few more of the Unsullied ran for the castle. Some of the men threw down their shields, that they might move faster. At their center, Brienne saw Grey Worm with his dragonglass sword. A last lone cry rose up from him. 

The gate shut, and as it did, the flaming arrows flew out into the night, making a perfect arc over the Unsullied of Astapor before the dead rushed forward and overcame them in an insistent, black wave.

“Nock,” Howland commanded again. “Draw!”

The dead ran for the wall.

“Loose!” 

A hail of arrows rained down upon the dead, then another, sinking a few. _Not enough_ , thought Brienne.

Her breath caught in her throat as they crashed into the stones, one surge after another, and she watched with astonishment as they bashed into the walls and soon into one another, the piling of their lifeless bodies driving up a chorus of cracking and thudding so evil it turned her blood to ice. They were climbing, now, climbing the stones, climbing the bodies, and the archers stepped away as a line of northmen charged in to tip flaming vats of oil upon them, but where those fell more came in their place. A few paces down, a hand reached over the wall, and Tormund hacked it off. Another shot up, and another, and in an instant they were coming over, and the crannog archers were running down the stairs to flee as more soldiers filed in to relieve them.

Dark wings clapped over their heads as Daenerys landed with Drogon on top of the wall, his talons crushing the stones to dust and felling dark tumbles of it into the dead below. “ _Dracarys_ ,” the white queen screamed, and the dragon shot a tunnel of blinding heat down. Her small shoulders heaved up and down in anguished breaths. More dead came climbing.

Further down the battlement, she saw Jon Snow look upon the Night King’s army. The glow of their braziers illuminated his face. And in that moment she saw everything she needed to know. _The walls are going to fall to them. We’re too few._

“Snow,” she called to him, her voice snapping on the solitary syllable of his name. He jerked his head toward her. She watched as his jaw moved. Then he nodded. From atop her great black dragon, Daenerys looked, too, and gave a short nod of her head. Drogon plummeted down from the battlement and took Daenerys soaring into the whirling sky, where they dragged several more blasts of fire onto the dead before disappearing in the storm.

“Commanders!” the northern king shouted, and Beric, Tormund, Howland, and Jaime looked to him in attention. They were the ones who were left, Brienne realized with a grimness. The only ones now. Over the howl of wind, he said, “It’s time, now! Get your people to the crypts!”

Brienne swallowed hard, then she swung her head around to look at the Vale men beside her at the walls and those in the yards below where most of the other armies had congregated, waiting. To them she shouted, “Vale, to the crypts,” and when she did the others gave their commands as well, a clamor of cries rising just above the growing clash of steel and together they began to fall back to the stairs leading off the battlements, their swords meeting the dead as they made their retreat.

Blood the color of pitch and the thickness of clay ran in thick globs over the hilt of her sword and down onto her arm. There were rivers of it, an unending wash of gore that slipped and sluiced through her fingers, threatening her grip of the sword, but as she edged down the stair she kept her arm swinging. Her thoughts clamped like a vise to the path she had to take: get to the crypts. Get them all to the crypts. She did not even see the dead wildling as it tumbled down from above. She only heard Podrick grunt, and beside her there was the blur of bodies falling, and suddenly he was not beside her any more, but gone.

Brienne wailed out a disbelieving cry so breathless it broke apart in her mouth. 

“Come on,” she heard Jaime say. The stiff push of metal was at her back again. Insisting. Demanding.

 _He’s gone,_ she thought, a misery blacker than night raking through her, claiming her. 

But her feet were falling down the stairs, and her sword was still swinging, cutting, and then earth and the crunch of ice was again under the soles of her boots, and they were making for the hall that would lead them down, down into the underbelly of the great northern castle, where the ancient kings slept, where the women and children cowered still in darkness, where they would take to the network of tunnels Bran had described, and escape. 

They were some of the first at the door. The men pounded at it with their fists. “Let us in,” they cried, “please, let us in!” And after a moment it swung open, letting the the surviving warriors through, their thousands running down through the hall where among the innocents Sansa, Sandor, Arya, and Bran waited with the advisors Sam, Tyrion, Varys, and Missandei.

Jon had not yet come into the crypts when Brienne and Jaime arrived, the press of hundreds more at their backs.

“What’s happened,” shouted Sansa, but Bran only looked on with absent knowing. With horror, Brienne’s stare moved over the tombs of the Starks, which rattled vaguely, the dust disquieted from their heavy stone lids. 

“Come,” said the crippled Stark who called himself the Three-Eyed Raven. His strange eyes were upon Jaime. “Come and take me onto your back.” 

Jaime went ghastly pale beside her.

“Hurry,” Bran said now with a firmness, “the chair will be too slow.”

Sheathing his sword, he went to the young man who was more bone than muscle, and gingerly he lifted him from his chair. Bran clasped his arms around Jaime’s neck while Jaime hefted his legs over his hips and hooked his arms beneath them, securing him there.

Sansa took a torch from the wall. Varys, Missandei, and Sam did the same.

“Follow me,” said Bran.

To Jaime, he said, “Forward, then left through the gap in the wall.”

Jaime gave a terse nod, then carried Bran where he said, and behind them the desperate living clambered after. 

They must have run for an hour or more, descending through a series of narrow tunnel so dark and dripping with humid cold that Brienne thought they would never again see daylight, nor the moon, nor the stars above. All the while Jaime held Bran without complaint, though as Brienne ran beside him she could see the sweat streak down through the caked-on mud and gore in fine rivulets, and she could hear over their echoing footsteps his haggard breath, and she could sense that he did not have much more strength left in him now. None of them truly did. It was fear that kept them going now, not hope, for behind them, stretching far back into the crypts, the cackling, throttling rumor of the dead followed them, and Brienne knew whosoever was unlucky enough to run at the heels of the retreat was already falling to their grasping hands. 

But as they led the panicked crowds, Brienne’s thoughts held to the man next to her. To the night they’d shared before the hells broke their tide upon Winterfell, before the world began its end. Brienne stole a glance at him, at his head which he had ducked while he ran, at the lines of his face that glowed sharp and perfect in the torchlight. And she was glad. She was glad. Could you be glad of death, she wondered? Glad? _Perhaps, when there’s nothing else. When there’s only this._

At last though the passage widened, and they came upon a great door. It was latched with a heavy block of mountain stone, and Brienne ran to it, heaving it with all her strength, but she could not lift it, not alone, and Sandor moved to her side and pushed with her till it fell aside, crashing to their feet with a thundering crack.

Together, she and Clegane pressed their shoulders to the door, and it shrugged open, and the night air met them in a shock of wind and snow. 

Brienne blinked, struggling to see past the storming winds that blanketed the world still in whirling darkness.

“We’re beyond the godswood,” Arya said from beside her. And they were: they’d emerged a good ways from the walls of the castle through a door that seemed to lead straight from a rise in the ground. When she turned her head, she could only just see the faint gray wall behind her, the few bare crowns of the trees of the godswood swaying in the storm.

The dead weren’t there. Not yet. But she could hear them not even a mile a way, spilling over the halls, driving horrible cries from the living who still were trapped within. And behind them. Still behind them, beneath the castle. 

“Go,” said Brienne loudly, and as they stepped aside, the few thousands that they had saved began to flood out of the passage and into the snow.

At that moment, Drogon dove out of the clouds above and circled while the people streamed out, and then when the crowds thinned, Brienne watched as the dragon plunged down and thundered his weight into the door that had led out from the snowy rill, crushing it so the dead running at their heels could not reach them. Some of the people shrieked, but their screams died down when they saw their king atop him, clutching Daenerys. The Targaryen murmured something to the beast, and it lowered its armored neck, allowing Jon to slide down to the ground below.

He strode to where she and Jaime stood.

“Bran,” he said to his brother. “Tell me. What will we do?” 

“The survivors must go to White Harbor. Take Daenerys’ ships, and fall away to the coast where you'll be safe. The dragon Rhaegal lives. Let him find his brother, and let the dragons go south with their queen. The rest must come with me.”

Confusion passed through Jon’s dark eyes.

“Bran, you have to leave. You have to go south.”

The Three-Eyed Raven smiled sadly. “The Night King goes south to take the realms of the living, not north. Not where I’m going.”

“Where are you going?” 

“Hornwood. I need to get to the godswood there. It's not so far out of the way from White Harbor, Jon. When the storm has calmed, I'll come for you.” Bran raised his voice slightly then, though the wind near snuffed it out. “Those who will come with me, make your choice now.”

Beric was the first to step forward. “I am with you,” the Lightning Lord said, his one eye twinkling in the darkness. 

“I’ll go with you,” said Tormund, thumping his chest. A few of his wildlings stepped to his side. Five crannogmen gave their word, too, freckled Kerill among them. Howland remained quiet; Brienne supposed he would be needed to gather the people at the Neck.

It was Jaime’s voice that shocked her. “I’m with you,” he said, low enough for the lord slung over his back to hear.

Brienne’s eyes flashed to him.

She could not leave him. Where he went, she too would have to go.

“I’ll come with you to Hornwood,” she heard herself promise to Bran, and he nodded his head on Jaime’s shoulder. “Sansa permitting.” 

His sister looked to Brienne with an expression that was difficult to read. Sansa feared for her, she realized. But Sandor stood beside her, and Brienne knew he would be guard enough.

Arya was the last to step forward. She said nothing, only gave a spin of the staff in her hands.

Jon reached a trembling hand to his brother’s cheek. Though he was not his brother, not in truth. “Sansa has called the armies of riverlands,” he said, quietly, “and Daenerys will call the Ironborn from their seas. The crannogmen wait at the Neck. We’ll unite the south and fight them where we can.”

“Go, we’ll meet you,” Bran said, but Jon hesitated still. "I promise you, Jon," he said.

Jon gave a stiff nod then. He stepped away, climbing the scales of the waiting dragon until he and Daenerys sat again atop it.

“You are the armies of the living,” he cried out to them, and they watched him, captive. “Follow us from where we fly. We make for White Harbor.” 

From beside him, Daenerys stood, her sash of red and her hair of white whipping about in the winds. “Living!” she refrained, shouting. “We’ve fallen tonight. But tomorrow we’ll rise!”

A heartened cry went up from the crowds. Children clutched their mothers' legs. Some were sobbing. Others lifted their swords just as readily as they had before the battle began. _We’re watching the birth of a king,_ Brienne thought. _And a queen._

“After me!” cried Daenerys. Drogon leapt up into the sky, and as the dragon carried the king and queen away, the people followed them in disordered lines, trudging through wind and through snow into the far off night until only their small coterie remained.

It was then that Brienne saw the red priestess Melisandre standing among them. She had not announced for either cause.

“There is no time,” the strange woman said in a voice of velvet. “The dead are coming.”

Brienne glanced hurriedly at the horizon, or what little of it she could see. How the priestess had known, Brienne did not understand, but it was as she said. A tide of the dead were streaming around the walls of Winterfell, and soon they would be upon them again.

“Go,” the priestess commanded.

She fell to her knees, driving her hands forward into the snow. 

From the woman a massive burst of flame erupted without wood or oil to stoke it. Her body burned and crumpled within.

They ran.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, everyone. The pacing of these scenes is fairly difficult, and I find myself going back over many times just trying to keep track of the action I've planned and where everyone's place is on the board. I hope it's somewhat legible. Anyway, onto the next.
> 
> Oh um and in my headcanon wights can't suddenly like hulk smash through stone, so yeah, the dead Starks are stayin in their tombs. thanks D:


	24. Jaime XII

Dawn came imperceptibly, with first no light at all, then little by little a fine filigree of blue cracking like ice at the far horizon, until at last their dozen haggard forms, for so long limited to the husks of shadows moving within shadows, caught at the edges of their furs and armor and cold-worn faces with the pale promise of light, and the winds let up, and the snow stopped falling, and Jaime could see the way ahead.

Over the last day and night they had taken carrying Bran in turns, but it was Jaime who held him as the castle Hornwood appeared over a swell of ground. As the sun rose above a bank of clouds to the east, the somber stones of the towers were washed in a soft pink color, and the same color alighted over Brienne’s figure walking beside him. It seemed impossible to him that there could be any color left in the entire world after what they’d seen. But it was there, and it was unmistakably beautiful.

The sight loosed a sigh from him, and Brienne looked over, her large eyes writ plain with concern. “Let me,” she said, offering her back.

Jaime shook his head, a terse, strained motion with the man draped over his shoulders.

“It’s all right,” he answered, saying nothing more. He adjusted the weight of the silent lord on his hips.

It had been unbearably strange, at first, to carry the same man he had crippled all these years ago. With every step, that had added its weight to the lord’s, the memory of being discovered in the broken Stark tower surfacing in his mind and refusing to be quashed. Its every excruciating detail had chorused within him: the elation he’d felt at a chance to be alone with Cersei after so many weeks of travel and ceaseless eyes upon them, their laughter as they had climbed the crumbling stairs of the tower, the way he’d slashed away a twisting vine and Cersei had complained of the thousands of spiders exploding out of their nest, cursing the Starks’ decorating sense in some ready jape, and there was too the twist of her hair in his fist, just as fine as a spider’s web only of gold thread and shining and perfumed of Cersei, _Cersei_ , and there was their exquisite bodies meeting, his nearness a bright white heat behind his eyes when _STOP,_ she had screeched _,_ and he’d seen him then, the Stark boy, and so quickly he had resigned himself to what he must do, and did it…out of love for her. Not the first terrible act committed thus, and neither the last. _It's all too like carrying my own sins_ , he fretted as he carried the man, though he shrunk away from the thought just as soon as it came, an unsettling fear creeping through him that Bran could somehow see into his mind. But as that first night had worn on and turned to morning, Jaime had barely the energy anymore for any thought, however damning, and the memory of Cersei and the boy falling dislodged itself from his mind like her cobweb hair had slipped, once, from his hand. By the second day of their flight from Winterfell, a dense fatigue had settled over their company, banishing any speech between them but the occasional groan or grunt as they walked. 

The gate was shuttered when they came, great drifts of snow and ice gathered at its floor.

“Hallo,” Tormund roused, cupping a hand over his mouth, but no one answered. At the height of their stakes atop the empty walls, banners of orange and black snapped morosely in the wind.

“They will have all gone on by now,” Brienne reasoned. It was the most any of them had said in hours. “I saw men and women carrying their sigil in Winterfell’s halls.” 

“If that’s their sign, some of their men fought beside me in the night,” said one of the wildling women who had elected to follow them. She was a short, mousey thing with hard eyes. “They fell,” she added simply.

“We’ll need a way in,” said Beric.

Kerill nodded to the crannogmen who’d come with him.

“We’ll scout around the walls. See if there’s a place to climb.”

The small men awaited no leave, and they dispersed quietly, taking their silver bows from their backs and edging out around the castle until they disappeared from sight. After seeming to think a moment, Arya went as well, her staff swaying over her shoulder.

“Let me down,” said Bran, and Jaime startled at his voice. But he did as asked, stooping awkwardly to lower the man onto a bank of snow raised enough for Bran to lean against. He knelt beside him, and as he did his body ached with a hundred complaints. Jaime massaged a hand against the angry muscles at his neck. Hunger occurred to him with a pang, and with hunger came the realization of the wet of his boots and the insufficient warmth of his cloak. It had been easier the last hours to be driven by fear, and only fear. Now it dawned on him that he was alive, but only just, and badly worn. A brisk glance at Brienne confirmed she was much the same, as were the others. Though something else had settled over Brienne; her eyes betrayed it, as they always did.

 _She’s grieving,_ he thought. _She’s kept it back this far._

He’d seen Podrick fall. The wights had begun pouring over the walls, and one had landed on the squire as they’d made their run from the battlements to the yards, and together they’d crashed into the darkness. Unbidden, Jaime’s thoughts flew again to the Stark boy’s fall, his face twisting with fear as the ground rose up to meet him. In Jaime’s memory the boy never screamed. Podrick hadn’t, either. He was only there, then not there, and fate had not saved him.

Cautiously, Jaime shifted back on his heels to lean toward her. She didn’t respond. Her eyes stared blankly ahead. The cheerful pink had since drained out of the sky, leaving only a vague grey lightness above them, and her skin was pale with cold. He pressed his shoulder against hers.

After what might have been a lifetime, Brienne leaned into him, her head drooping forward. His heart thudded painfully in his throat. At her small sign of permission, he sought her hand, and he held it.

Some time later, the faint silhouette of Arya Stark appeared atop the gatehouse, followed by the slim figures of the crannogmen beside her. Jaime thought he saw the girl smile. 

The chains rattled and the wood complained as the great door creaked open. Brienne gently dropped his hand from hers and moved to pick up Bran in her arms, but Jaime reached out to her, stilling her with a touch of his golden hand.

“No,” he said, “let me.” _It has to be me._

Hornwood was as empty as her walls, with carts lying forgotten in the path, their contents spilled over the ground and coated in a thick layer of snow, and as they picked their way through the drifts, Brienne and the others hefted the points of their swords in front of them and moved between the buildings with care, but each door they passed had been left thrown open with no fires lit in the hearths inside, and behind every shadow no dead seemed to lie in wait. They had jumped when their company rounded a bend and something crashed loudly, but it was only a sow left in its stall, rutting its weight against its confines.

It was some time past midday when they came upon the godswood. The sentinels bowed under the the weight of powder of and ice, their grey-green needles shining, and quietly they filed among them, listening while the dark branches creaked and sighed above them.

“It will be at the center,” said Bran from Jaime’s back. 

It was a large wood, but it was as Bran said; at last the heavy boughs parted to the bare canopy of a single silver weirwood tree, its eyes and smile of blood crying to see them come.

Hesitant, now, Jaime walked him to the the strange northern tree, and he knelt beneath it, taking Bran’s arms with care and easing him against the tree’s broad trunk.

“Thank you,” he said. Jaime made himself meet his eyes.

“I…” said Jaime, but his voice stopped. He was aware of all the others gathered around them, waiting, watching. He only nodded, and stepped away.

Bran lifted his voice. “Find food, eat, rest. Come back to me here. I will be a moment.”

Tormund, the wildlings, and the crannogmen went, though Beric, Arya, Jaime, and Brienne remained. Arya knelt closest to her brother, placing her hand on his knee. Above them, a soft snow began to fall, and the flakes hissed down through the branches.

“Bran,” said Arya, “you’ve been in the cold too long. You might be hurt and not feel it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied, not ungently.

“It does, Bran. You could lose your legs to bite.”

The girl was tough, and Jaime was in no hurry to cross her, but the worry was plain in her voice now. She had good reason, too. All these past many hours, they’d carried him, true, but the running, carrying, that had warmed them, that had kept them alive through the storm. Bran had only his heavy fur coat and clothes and the cold press of armor at their backs. If they peeled his breeches back, perhaps they’d see the black wound Jaime had once heard northern soldiers call the bite. You could lose an ear or foot to that, the soldiers had said. 

Bran placed a gloved hand on top of his sister’s.

“It doesn’t matter, not now. I have my mind. I have my eyes.”  

A single tear slid from Arya’s eyes. Bran withdrew his hand into his lap.

“I’ll be still for awhile, now,” he warned. “Don’t wake me.”

Almost as soon as the words left his lips, his head knocked back against the base of the weirwood tree, and his eyes rolled back, a thick film of fog settling in where the whites should have been.

Silence drew over them until there was only the hush of snow drifting down.

Jaime looked about himself. Beric leaned against a tree, Brienne cradled her chin in her fists.

“What is he,” he asked uncertainly.

Arya stood from where she had knelt before her brother.

“Haven’t you heard of wargs in your capital?” the she-wolf said, her droll voice edged with menace.

It was Beric that rescued him.

“Oh, they call them all sorts of things, you find,” said Dondarrion from beneath the shadowed pine, his one eye smiling. “When your brother Robb made his war, I heard the people give its sort of magic a thousand names. Beastling, skinchanger, demon…though in the north they call them wargs, true. And Robb Stark was perhaps no warg at all, though farmer and soldier alike saw his direwolf and dreamt a great many tale of the Young Wolf, who could change into his wolf’s skin and open the throats of an entire village in a night.” Beric tilted his head. “But Bran is more than that.”

“A greenseer,” said Brienne, a question in her voice.

Arya’s dark eyes flashed at him, though Jaime had not spoken. “He calls himself the Three-Eyed Raven. He sees into the past. The future too.” 

“Might be he’s the only one who can help us now,” said Beric thoughtfully. 

Footfall sounded through the godswood. Brienne stood, Oathkeeper flowing out in her hand, but it was only Tormund and the others, returned with cloths tied with food and kindling and flint. The wildlings made quick work lighting a fire for them to warm themselves by, and Tormund sliced them each a carving of hard sausage and thick heels of bread. Kerill produced a cookpot, and the crannogmen set it beside the fire and filled it with armfuls of snow to melt down to water, which they drank readily, passing the pot around when it had cooled.

All the while, Bran dreamed…whether into the past or into the future none could tell. Ladling another spoonful of water past his lips, Jaime thought, _So he is like the Reed boy_. He remembered the crannog girl who would have been his sister, Meera. She had said they went with Bran beyond the Wall, and that they had been guest to the Children of the Forest. Jaime’s eyes wandered to Brienne, who crouched in the snow beside him. So many tales they’d heard in the time since their paths had met. And many more impossible things they had since seen with their own eyes. He hardly knew the difference anymore between a tale and a truth; they seemed to have collapsed upon one another some time ago, and had intertwined so inseparably that he might not be so surprised should their lives someday become one of the songs. _If there is anyone left to sing it, I hope they sing of Brienne, the Maid of Tarth, and her magic blade,_ he thought, a smile twitching at his lips but not quite breaking _. I’d wish the song of her would fill the halls of a hundred homes and holdfasts till everyone knew her name._

Brienne startled him out of his thoughts with a curt intake of breath, and Jaime looked in time to see Bran blink, the darks of his eyes returned where the grey had been before.

Arya moved toward him. 

“Have you seen what we must do?” she asked.

Bran held up a hand to still her. “First, I have to explain.”

In the brief time Jaime had been in the company of the Stark who called himself a Raven, he had noted the way his eyes seemed often unfocused, like he was there but also far away at the same time. Now though Bran looked remorseful, his brown eyes moving between them as they stared at him from around the fire.

“I thought we might prevail, in Winterfell,” he said. “I tell you the truth, every future is uncertain, each one more possible than the next, and I have seen many. Time, you see, is not unlike the weirwood tree, or any tree for that matter. The past is below the surface of the ground we walk, and it juts out in a thousand tangling roots, of which mortal memory possesses only shallow imaginings and fleeting recollection, and from these we make the fogs of legends which are our imperfect histories. The rest, however, lies in darkness.

“Above the earth, many branches sprout off of the one stem, and they are so numbered that they are too much to ever see all at once. You might stare at one branch and know it, see its bark, its buds, the way it crosses over its neighbor. But together the branches weave an impossible net, and no one mind could know it, not even mine. The past, that I can see. I can look at the roots as long as I like, they do not change but only sink deeper, further away. But in the air all life is likely, and the tree may twist any way the light gives.”

He paused, and Arya seized the chance to question him. “You saw, then, that we won? Before, I mean, ahead of the battle, only it went differently?”

“No,” he said, “I do not see the future the way I see the past. It does not show itself clearly, only in fits and flashes...symbols…They are shadows of what may be. But I have seen the Long Night...its battles and its blood and its secrets. Despite the tales that remain of those days, there was not a lone hero, but many, whose stories became confused and jointed over time to the one, to that of the Prince who wielded the sword Lightbringer. No, they were not one but many heroes of unlikely friendship, and it was their union that made it possible to win ground against the dead and banish them behind the Wall. But it was different, then.” Bran’s cool eyes slid to Tormund and the wildlings. “Then, there was no Craster, and there were no sons given beyond the Wall to the King of the Lands of Always Winter. The Night King has many children now, and with him they share in his power and steer his armies. I believe we cannot defeat him unless his sons are taken, too.”

Jaime shifted forward at that. “Brienne felled one. A White Walker. When she did, several thousands of the dead fell with her. The entire swell at the right flank.”

Bran looked at her.

“Yes,” he said.  
  
“You knew?” said Jaime, disbelieving.

“I felt a shift in his power.” Bran pushed back the sleeve of his right arm, revealing angry cords of purple that wrapped around his pale skin. _A handprint_ , Jaime realized with a start.

“The Night King marked me long ago. What I see, he sees, and the same secrets of time are given over to him.” Bran adjusted his shoulders against the tree. “But in return I feel him, in my mind. I feel his power. Slight suggestions of his movements, where he might go.”

“Where does he go?” asked Brienne.

“South,” replied Bran. “As we linger here, he takes more towns and more thousands, and his army grows stronger. You must understand, he is not like a human king, though once he was human, and some sort of human thought may remain in him. He has no interest in thrones or capitals. He will go as far as the southern seas, and perhaps further, until there is no life, no memory, only the great nothing before time.”

“We five,” said Arya, looking between herself, Beric, Brienne, Tormund, and Jaime. “Did you see us?” 

Bran was quiet. Then he lowered his head.

“Yes, I saw you. In a dream, many moons ago now. It may be I saw you together because you would bring me here. I cannot say.”

They all thought on that, for a moment. _Those who will come with me, make your choice now_ , Bran had said outside the walls of Winterfell.

“Where did you go, just now?” asked his sister. Snow had gathered in her dark hair. 

He raised his eyes to her.

“Your pasts,” said Bran simply. “Each of your pasts. To try to understand what brought you here, what put you together. And how you might serve the living. Though I believe you know as much as I need know, now. You know that you are together. The rest must be yours to choose.”

Jaime made himself speak. “Snow, and Daenerys Targaryen. Did you see them? Their dragons?”

“They have made it to White Harbor, yes, and their armies arrive with them, though the dead have not been far behind. But in the late hours of this last night, Jon sent a dozen ravens from the coast; I have flown with them, and have followed them in the air. They fly to every port and holdfast telling of the battle in Winterfell and warning of the coming of the dead. He hopes to bring more to his side, to protect them before they are taken and added to the Night King’s numbers.”

“Even if we manage to take the White Walkers, Lord Snow won’t get close to the Night King so long as the fallen dragon protects him,” said Brienne slowly. “We saw it at Winterfell, they did battle in the sky. Their king won’t use the dragon against the living, because it will keep them from turning, won’t it? Its fire prevents them from coming back. But neither Daenerys Targyaren or Snow could defeat the Night King when he was atop his dragon. And they were kept away from burning back the dead so long as he chased them.”

The fire crackled, the snow falling into the flames and turning to lazy swirls of steam in the air. Bran regarded her.

“The dragon must be taken, yes.”

“But how?” asked Tormund. “How can you kill a dragon, when it is already one of them?”

Jaime ran a hand over his jaw. “Cersei has scorpions. If she's had Qyburn issue more to be made, perhaps we could…when we take the city…” His words trailed away to vapor. _Cersei will have to die, first. Her heart is full of spite; she will never aid us now._

“I’m afraid Brienne is right. You won’t have a chance, if you wait that long. No, it must happen now,” said Bran, a faraway sort of sadness coming into his voice. They all looked to him, the weight of his suggestion dawning on each woman and man.

“No, you…can’t. It’s not _alive_ ,” protested Arya.

“My power is strongest by the weirwood trees. That’s why I’ve asked you to bring me here,” Bran explained, though he sounded less like Bran now and more the Three-Eyed Raven. “I won’t be coming back, this time.”

“Bran—” his sister said, but he offered his hand to her, and it was from him a strange, otherworldly gesture. She took it and gripped it.

“It's time, now. You each will find what you will ahead. This is mine to do.”

“Wait,” said Jaime. His thoughts rushed. “I haven’t—I want you to know I’m sorry.”

The man met his eyes, and Jaime saw some faint recognition pass there within him. In his own mind's eye, Jaime again saw the face of the boy as he fell from the tower, his mouth open but not screaming.

“I am not the object of your forgiveness,” he said. “I am only what I am, what I perhaps was always going to be.”

The Three-Eyed Raven rested his head back against the white flesh of the tree. His dark hair spread out over his collar as he did, and his hand slid free from Arya’s. Then his eyes went grey, and the fire before him snatched onto a knot of sap, and sparks burst up in the air and fizzled and hissed until they cracked away to nothing.

 

 


	25. Brienne XIV

The sky had already begun to grow dark when they left. As the fire slowly died down, they had lingered, watching him, but no meaning or movement came, though he breathed shallowly still, and his eyes had not returned from their mist. Kerill Reed volunteered to stay behind, and the other crannogmen stayed, too. “Burn him,” Arya had said, at last climbing up from his side. “Burn him, when he’s gone.” Kerill bowed his head in a nod, and the slight crannogman beside him bent over and tossed another branch into the flames.

They picked their way through Hornwood’s stores, gathering up a few more supplies before turning out again to face the road to White Harbor, and Brienne felt a twinge of guilt as she thrust a hand down into some woman’s pot of grains and drew out a sack full so that they might have something warm to sup on in the night. She thought of how Jaime had sung to her in the kitchens of Winterfell, _She won’t miss it for a nonce, she won’t miss it_ , and though it had been a bit of childish silliness between them, now her stomach turned unpleasantly to think these women were never coming back for their kitchens. They would never again pick up the stashed wine skin and sip from it while scullery children ran about their skirts, would never again dip a spoon down into the oats to lift some out for their families. It wasn’t stealing, Brienne knew, only surviving, but still as she took a pair of woolen stockings lying forgotten by the hearth and exchanged them for her own wet and worn ones, she said beneath her breath, “I’m sorry.”

They’d found a rouncey in one of the the stables, a sad, lean old thing with a greying face, but she’d suffice to throw their few packs and furs over, and as Tormund said, “If it comes to it, she’ll be meal enough.” Then they were away, the castle’s gate left open like a yawning mouth behind them. 

The walk was long and made difficult by the heavy deposit of snow the last storm had left; in some parts of the path, one of them would take a step only to fall suddenly to their hips in snow, and they had to work quickly to brush the powder from their clothes and boots to keep it from melting.

As night crept on, there was very little moonlight to see by, and the clouds above were stubborn and thick. When she could no longer see the arm of the Crone's Lantern above her, the same stars her father had once taught her to sail by as a girl, Brienne called out wearily that they must stop.

They lit a modest fire with the wood they’d saddled to the rouncey mare and set a watch, with Tormund offering to take the first hour. The other wildlings dug out a bit of the snow and banked it in around them, bracing in the warmth of their bodies. _A clever trick, though I suppose you have to know how to make warmth from anything if you live beyond the Wall._ Its ingenuity almost warmed her even more, and she might have asked the wildling woman with the short crop of mousy brown hair to tell her of her life, had Brienne possessed any strength to form the syllables with her tongue, or had she trusted that if she looked into her heart, she could just then find any patience for wonder or for love. Instead, Brienne found her tongue savor only of bitterness, and she sank down onto the meager blanket of fur and pulled her wool cloak over her, not bothering to undo any of her armor. She’d be next to rise for the watch, and she doubted she’d sleep besides.

She had shut her eyes and started to drift when Jaime startled her by curling up at her side, throwing the folds of his cloak over the both of them. She turned her head to look at him. 

“What are you doing,” she hissed beneath her breath.

“Keeping warm,” he answered shortly, and he draped a possessive arm over her.

She felt herself blush, though she searched her mind for an argument and was too tired to answer back with any. The warmth of his body beside hers made her feel foolish, and she felt too aware of the others who may be watching, but what did it matter now? _It’s surviving_ , she intoned in her mind, her thoughts running thick and black and slow, _only that, now._ And, impossibly, Brienne fell to sleep. 

Her face was pressed into the space between Jaime’s shoulders when Tormund woke her a while later, saying softly, “Your go,” and she disentangled herself, adjusting his cloak over his body while taking hers and wrapping it about her shoulders with a shudder. 

Tormund had added several more logs to the fire before he retired for the night. The firelight cast a bleary glow over their makeshift camp, and outside the walls of packed snow, darkness stretched on for miles. _There’s nothing to see,_ thought Brienne,  _nothing to watch. If anything comes, I doubt I’ll see until it’s upon us._ She thought of the broken men with mismatched shields who had attacked her on the moors, and then of Podrick, who was gone, gone and perhaps one of them, now. She hadn’t seen that in time, either. _He was like a son to me,_ she thought. For perhaps the hundredth time that day, she remembered him in flashes; his face full of glee as he turned to look at her, or the grit of concentration in his brow as he struggled to parry her strikes, or his careful voice when he became bold enough to give her his counsel. She had been hard on him, never doted or gave praise overmuch, but he was _good_ , he _was_ , and he had chosen her and followed her to his last breath. _And I couldn’t protect him,_ she thought,  _not this time. Is there any worse hurt?_

It wrenched her heart and made her want to vomit, though there was precious little in her stomach to pitch up. Suddenly, desperately, she ached to speak with Catelyn Stark, to be back beside her, to have the trees full with their leaves again, their boughs sighing over them. But those days were so far gone Brienne could weep, for Catelyn, for herself, for all the terror that had come for them both. If she could, she would have walked out into the cold and let herself die there. But, _No,_ she thought, _I have to fight_ , _I have to survive. We all must._ She’d stay her watch. Anything else would be folly.

For an hour, perhaps more, Brienne peered out into the blackness, consumed by dark thoughts. When the fire again burned low, she stirred and went to add a log to its coals. She had to sink to a crouch and lower her face to the flames to encourage the wood to catch, and when she sat back on her heels afterward, she found Jaime’s eyes on her from across the fire. A finger of warmth brushed through her.

“Come to sleep,” he said softly. “It’s past your turn.”

She considered, searching herself for fatigue. And it was there, of course, a heavy drowsiness pulling at the edges of her body, inking the borders of her thoughts. Brienne crossed over to him and sank down where she had lain before.

“All right,” she said, “thank you.”

“Thank me? No, no, no,” he whispered back. Beric slept to his right; Jaime nudged the man with his leg. “Dondarrion,” he said, “your watch.”

The man rose slowly, wrapping his cloak about him. Brienne watched his figure pass before the fire. He was thin, she realized. He looked half wasted away. 

“Come here,” Jaime said, interrupting her thoughts. He patted the fur spread out between them.

She looked down at his hand.

“I am here,” she said. Her head hurt, her whole body pinched and ached and hurt, and she felt little adroitness to spar with him for his meaning. 

He sighed, but rather than answer he moved his body closer to hers, so that their sides pressed together beneath their cloaks. Brienne watched her breath bloom out into the air in a fine silver mist as he hesitated like that, and faraway she felt her heart beating fast, the way it often had whenever he was near, whenever he touched her. She screwed her eyes shut and tried not to remember the night they’d shared before the battle at Winterfell. _It was only battle lust, only a body seeking out a body, heat looking for heat._ She could not bear to think anything else. Whether it would continue between them, though…He seemed to want that, though she could not think how, or why. As he imposed himself against her, she tried once again to fathom it, but in her mind she met a limitless wall, grey and unyielding, and she felt so stupidly small in its presence that she only wanted to turn away, not look, make herself smaller still.

Brienne felt his breath shift onto her neck, a faint humid breeze kissing the little bit of bare skin there. He’d turned on his side and was looking at her, she knew it without opening her eyes. _Oh, let him go away_ , she thought, _let him stop but also don’t let him stop._

“Brienne,” he said, so quietly. “You’re beautiful.”

The words lanced through her. Blood thundered in her ears.

How long had she wanted to hear those words, how long had she feared them? How improbable were they, arriving from Ser Jaime Lannister’s lips? 

Perhaps, once, Brienne might have understood them for a jest, and she might have cried, or beaten him, or both. But now she suspected he made no jest, and still she found the words objectionable. It was worse, somehow. Worse, because she did not believe him.

“Be quiet,” she heard herself say, and she turned away.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but more tomorrow. xx


	26. Jaime XIII

Though thrice its size, White Harbor was near just as empty as Hornwood when they arrived. Great pyres had been built outside the city gates; they’d smelt the smoke from miles away, and while they walked they had spoken anxiously of what they might expect to find. Perhaps the dead had overrun the flight of the living from Winterfell, and had taken the city. Perhaps the fighting still went on, and they’d come in the middle of battle. Though the clouds remained thick above them, and the whole world felt smothered in white, there had not been another storm; no more snow had fallen since they left Hornswood, and Tormund took this to reason that if he had come to this place, the Night King would have well passed on already. But if there was smoke, someone must have lived.

They had their answer when they passed what remained of the pyres and stood at the great gate of the city, or what had been the great gate, anyway. Only a singed hole remained where the gate should have been, with jagged cuts of stone opening where one tower of the gatehouse had plunged to the ground. At the top of the other tower that still stood, a few lads wrapped well in quilted linen and salt-pocked wools peered down at them, and when they saw their motley party, the gatekeepers said no word to them or gave them any quarrel, only shouted a command down the line that people approached. 

When they passed through the gaping tear in the wall, stepping over loose stone and ragged splinters of lumber and iron, a slight, solitary man stood waiting for them at the other side. He was dressed similarly to the few men they’d glimpsed atop the gatehouse, though this one had the sense or coin to wear a short cape of fur over his linen and his plate of boiled leather. It wasn’t until they stepped closer that Jaime recognized the man. _Ned Stark’s ward, Theon Greyjoy._ Though he was not the sneering boy Jaime recalled. A thin ring of curls were matted over his brow, and his skin was sallow and his stature undernourished of happiness and meal both. 

“We’ve come from Hornwood,” said Brienne when no one else elected to speak. “What’s happened here?”

Theon’s pale eyes fluttered up from the ground and settled on her.

“The dead came behind the retreat from Winterfell,” said the man. “Jon and Queen Daenerys arrived on their dragons before them, and sent the city to the ships and bade them sail to Dragonstone.”

Arya Stark took a step closer. Her cloak snapped about her calves.

“How many made it from Winterfell, Theon?”

“Some thousand,” he said. His voice was strained. “Sansa was with them. She’s alive. But many others fell as they made their escape, and several hundred died within the walls here, of injury or of cold, before the Night King even arrived.” 

“He came here?” said Arya quietly.

Theon blinked quickly and seemed to search himself. Each of them understood the sort of horror he was recounting within his mind.

“Come with me,” he said, “please. We’re to sail to Dragonstone. I’ll tell you the rest while you make yourselves warm.”

Jaime had never come to White Harbor, far as it was off the kingsroad, but he recalled learning of it as a boy before he had been sent to squire for Crakehall. His father kept an illuminated book of maps in his library at Casterly Rock, and Jaime had been made to study the houses and towns until he knew their names and significance. He remembered Maester Creylen’s cane tapping the the pages and the musty smell of his sleeves as Jaime leaned past him to peer at the books’ simple notations, the rolling lines of green ink indicating mountains, the deep blue veins marking the rivers. In the westerlands the names were matter-of-fact or friendly—the rivers Red Fork and Tumblestone lay placidly between the bald-faced mountains that ridged the country—but in the north they had all manner of fearsome names which had filled his head with wild dreams of adventure: there was the river Fever, Broken Branch, and Weeping Water, and his favorite, the White Knife, which cut its way through the northern heart to open the land to the sea. White Harbor sat at its mouth, and had been drawn in his father’s map with shining pale ink and a golden seven-pointed star.

The great northern port city was as white as the book promised, with walls that gleamed of pure pale stone, and Jaime imagined that when there was sun and open sky above it might have blinded a man to walk between the buildings, and that perhaps sailors would have seen the harbor all the way from Oldcastle as they rounded past the Sisters, a glittering, bustling beacon. But as it was, the thick blanket of clouds overhead glowered down and dimmed the otherwise brilliant stones, and the streets were largely empty, though as they made their way to the docks they saw a few faces peer out at them through the slats of shuttered windows, and a crone pushed a broom over the eave of a door, brushing away the snow. Some had stayed, he supposed, because they were not strong enough to survive the journey, or because they were too proud to die anywhere but the north. _Maybe they are the wise ones; the dead go south._

The docks were large and many, more even than he remembered at Lannisport, though it may have looked so remarkable only because a single ship remained at harbor, its masts listing tall and lonely against the sky. It was an ironborn war galley named _Bracken_ with sails bearing Euron’s sigil—a stolen ship, then _._

They boarded and were taken below into a humid gallery where a pot of strew waited for them, and sleeping midshipmen shook from their slings to rise up the way they’d came, answering to calls above deck to let down the sails and leave harbor. As the ship swayed and groaned to action, Theon lingered below with them. 

They had eaten their fill when Brienne resumed her questions. She avoided honorifics with the Greyjoy heir, Jaime realized, though he wasn’t sure why. He’d heard there was some infighting among the ironborn after the death of Balon Greyjoy, and Euron had proclaimed himself their leader; perhaps that was her reason.

“What else has happened,” she asked in a voice that was hoarse with fatigue, yet still gentle. “The city, was there battle?”

He shook his head. “No, not a battle. Most had already made it to the ships by the time the dead broke the gate with dragonfire. Jon had warned the people it would be a slaughter if they waited or tried to fight them. He told them to build pyres to burn the ones who succumbed to injury when they arrived from Winterfell.”

The smoking pyres whose tumble of ash had greeted them when they arrived. _Did Tyrion live, or was his body among the cinders?_ Jaime shuddered. _Mother, protect him…_

“When the dead overtook the city, the last of us made for the remaining ships and sailed into the bay. Jon stayed behind with the smaller of the dragons, the green, and burned what he could of their…army. The Night King flew over the city with his dragon, we saw it from the harbor and thought he came for us on the sea, but when the dragon flew closer, there was no rider on it, and it seemed to struggle in the air…then it pitched into the sea, and it did not rise again. The dead left, after that. My scouts say they went south, for the Neck.”

 _He’ll have already taken several thousand more and added that to his army_ , thought Jaime. But this tale of the undead dragon plunging into the sea rang in his ears, and he stole a glance at Brienne, who seemed to have reached the same conclusion. _Bran got into the mind of that thing_. _He must have unseated the Night King and drowned the dragon in the sea._ It was fortuitous, if the dragon was truly dead for keeps—it nearly cheered him. It meant it would be as the Three-Eyed Raven had promised, that the dragon would have to be taken for them to have any hope of getting close to the King of the Dead. Jaime’s eyes crept to Arya, who clutched a bed sling with white hands. _But if the dragon has been drowned, Bran will have drowned with it._ Her brother, or whatever was left of him, would be slumped by now against the weirwood tree, and not breathe nor dream nor fly with a raven’s wings again.

“What other news,” said Brienne after a long silence settled over them. “Have the others reached Dragonstone?” 

“I don’t know, I’ve not yet had word,” he said quietly. “The people of White Harbor have likely touched ground there already, but the rest will still be at sea. My sister Yara sails with them. I was commanded to stay here and wait for the ones who would come from Hornwood.” His eyes shifted over them. “I had thought…I thought Bran might be with you,” he said, and his voice rose at the end in question.

“No,” said Arya. She slid from the sling and was half up the deck stairs when she added blackly, “Bran is gone.”

Some time later, while Brienne and the others slept and the ship rocked gently through the waves, Jaime climbed to the deck. Though the air was cold, he was glad for its freshness; the salt opened his nose and cleared his head, which had been plagued the last hour with a dense fog of _Brienne_ as she dozed across the hold, her arms folded tightly over her chest. 

She carried on stronger than any of them, but Brienne was grieving still for Podrick, Jaime knew. The sheer hopelessness of their days prevented any solace or ceremony, and in all likelihood Pod had become one of Night King’s pawns and now marched with them, anonymous, cold, and beyond reach. They each had some reason to grieve, surely, but her grief was a frustrated one. It was one disturbed by the fact that its subject could not rest.   

He had tried, in their several days’ walk from Hornwood, to give her the meager comforts he might have sought for himself. He offered her his warmth and his want. But she hadn’t wanted that, it seemed, or hadn’t understood it. Time and time again she’d turned from him, telling him hoarsely, “Go away, Jaime,” or “Be quiet, Jaime,” and he obeyed, though he stayed always near enough, and she never troubled to put too great a distance between them. 

In the nights, when they huddled beneath the combined weight of their cloaks, he had burned, and he ached to reach out to her and kiss her, press the lengths of their bodies together. He wanted the scent of her hair, her sweat, her secret bursting, her thighs closing around his ears. He wanted the night they’d shared a thousand times over, and a thousand times differently, so long as he could keep having her—but she’d remained resolutely chaste with him, and it drove a deeper ache through him that he couldn’t chase or name. 

Jaime walked to the prow of the ship and leaned over the rail, his face catching the briny mist rising off the sea. With some shame, his thoughts went to Cersei, to the curve of her fingers raking along his shoulder, the nails catching skin. Sometimes she dug in far enough to draw fine beads of blood, a mark she coveted, her mark, their secret. He’d felt punished by that sort of longing. He’d known it all his life, had been marked by it, bound by it, and he had thought that was love.

 _No,_ he thought, as the sea roiled out before him in black and velvet and deep endless night, and the sudden clarity of it all rocked through him in peaceful waves, _no, it’s Brienne I love._  

He exhaled sharply. The sound of it startled him.

He had half a mind to turn and speed down the rungs of the stair to the hold where she swayed sleeping in her sling, and he might have shook her by the shoulders and woken her and kissed her, and with that briefest intention Jaime was already turning to go and do it in spite of its idiocy if only to relieve the sudden crashing weightlessness that rioted inside him, when Arya Stark stepped out of the dark and into his path.

Jaime brought his foot down slowly and stopped. A slight smile broke over the woman’s face.

“Can’t sleep either?”

“No,” he said. He hadn’t heard her come, though he should have. Above them the tacking creaked and sighed, and the boards of the ship moaned with the rise and fall of the sea.

“I won't kill you.” The whites of her eyes glittered in the faint light off the water. She seemed to enjoy her own inner joke, though no laughter came.

Jaime’s eyes glanced off the dagger at her hip. 

“It’s a wonder I was ever entrusted with your safety,” he broached. He made a stiff bow at the waist, though his chest pitched forward only an inch, and his stare never dropped from her. “Seems you’ve needed neither me, nor my fair companion.”

Something softened in the muscles of her face, which seemed an answer. Jaime wondered if his jest was really so far from the truth.

“I might have needed help, once,” she said at last, but offered no more about it. 

They moved back to the prow, leaning their forearms on the broad wooden rail, and they watched the ship cut the black water below. Jaime searched himself for something to say. 

“They say you trained with the Braavosi.”

“The Faceless Men. Yes.”

“And how was it Ned Stark’s daughter came to live among a famed order of assassins, exactly?” he said, and that earned another smile, a truer one than before. 

And so they talked.

 

 


	27. Jaime XIV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beginning to realize this fic has essentially become an elaborate tour of Westeros. Whoops.  
> Also, sorry. It is now angst-o-clock.

Dragonstone was an unfriendly place, with dark towers that jutted into the sky like the razor edges of a dragon’s spine, and halls that stunk eternally of salt and oiled torches burning and the deep mineral smell of stone. It bested the festering stench of shit and piss that was native to King’s Landing, though, so Jaime counted it an improvement from his sister’s capital. And it was, it appeared, in direct competition with the capital, as Jon and Daenerys had brought half the population of the north from White Harbor; Dragonstone had no real working harbor to speak of, but when they sailed in on Theon’s _Bracken_ , they saw a thousand masts punctuated against the rises of pale, hard cliff. Outside the castle’s walls, makeshift camps had popped up like mushrooms all between the jags of lime and hills of crumbling heather, and the smoke of cookfires and sound of chatter filled the air. 

When at last they’d come past the winding stair that led up from the beaches and rounded a final twist in the path, the fabled dragon gate lay before them, and a small party waited there to receive them, with Tyrion standing at their center. Banners of black and red and white and grey hung from the pillars behind him.

Jaime let loose a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He fell forward and crushed his little brother into his arms. 

“I thought I’d lost you,” he said, running a firm hand over his hair. Jaime felt Tyrion smile against his shoulder.

“Lost me? Hardly. I’ve had a city to run,” Tyrion joked, but his hand curled into the fabric of Jaime’s cloak and held him close.

From the gate, Tyrion, Davos Seaworth, and Missandei, the dark-haired beauty who advised the queen Daenerys, walked them to the great hall. Varys was not among them, Jaime realized, nor Grey Worm, nor Jorah Mormont. Grey Worm had been overrun at the gates of Winterfell as he commanded the protection of the retreat. And Jaime had not seen Mormont since before the battle began. All three had served Daenerys, but all three were gone. _And so many others with them._  

Another walked with them, though, a man Jaime had recognized before from the council at Winterfell. He might not have seen it on his own, but from the way he lingered at Arya’s side, matching his steps to hers, Jaime could only assume this was the Baratheon boy she’d spoken of. And then, in the blunt sunlight bearing down on them, it was suddenly plain to see; the man smiled, and faintly the ghost of all three brothers—Robert, and Stannis, and Renly—all laughed within him.

The hall was humid and dark, and it took some time while his eyes adjusted to the shadows in the room before he saw a table had been brought before a great towering throne hewn of rock. Sansa Stark stood from where she had been sitting, dropping the scroll she was holding into the pile of others at the table.

Arya crossed to her and the sisters held each other in a fierce embrace. When they broke apart, Brienne stepped forward and knelt before her.

“Lady Sansa,” she said, her head bowed, “I am returned to your service.”

Sansa’s hand jumped to Brienne’s shoulder. Torchlight stung Jaime’s eyes as Brienne raised her head to regard Catelyn’s daughters. 

“My friend,” Sansa said, simply, and her voice shook. Brienne stood.

Sansa’s eyes moved across Brienne to Jaime and the others. No doubt she did not miss that Bran was not among them. But she did not say anything of it then, only stepped toward Theon, who lingered to the side of their group. They watched as she took his face in her fair hands to look into his eyes, and then she wrapped her arms around him, and slowly, eventually, his own hands lifted from his sides and held her, too.

It was a touching reunion, he found, and he thought of what Bran had said when Arya asked him what he had seen—what he had been looking for in his strange rooted tree. _Your pasts,_ he had said. Jaime’s gaze drifted over the stones of the floor. It was, in a way, the fault of his choosing and his alone that Bran was not there with them to walk into his sister’s waiting arms. But then, everything might have been different. And in the long hours he had carried the crippled man on his back, Jaime had wanted nothing more than to be absolved of that particular sin, yet when he had tried to ask his forgiveness, Bran, or what was left of Bran, had not accepted it _. The past never goes away,_ _never quits being bloody, or hateful,_ thought Jaime. He imagined the branches the Three-Eyed Raven had described. Their shifting nature, the way they intertwined and burst out impossibly for the sky. His eyes sought Brienne. If he could not have the past differently, perhaps he could have a future of his choosing.

Tyrion gave them the sum of affairs as they were at their barest. Daenerys and Jon had flown north and west of Dragonstone to scout the advancement of the dead, and in answer to Sansa’s summons the riverlords moved their bannermen south. Tyrion had sent ravens to the westerlands as well, and while most houses had ignored him, he _had_ received response from two: Crakehall and Marbrand of Ashemark had both declared against Cersei and led their men to King’s Landing in open rebellion. Across the whole of Westeros, the tale of the battle at Winterfell and the flight from White Harbor had begun to spread, and smallfolk and noblemen alike braced with fear and abandoned their households and their fields. All pressed south. 

“And Lord Reed?” Brienne ventured. “What of Reed, and the people of the Neck?”

Jaime’s brother looked to Brienne. The sadness in his eyes betrayed him. “Lord Reed has not been seen since our retreat from Winterfell, my Lady Brienne. It’s suspected he fell during the night.” Tyrion paused. “I am told some of his men reached Greywater Watch and that a Lady Meera, his daughter, rides south with their remaining people. I can only hope they stay our cause.”

The news settled over him slowly. Inexplicably, fate had brought him together with the man who once was among Ned Stark’s closest friends, and Jaime had grown fond of him and his melancholy eyes. He tried to imagine Meera alone in the wilds of the Neck, leading her people away from the tide of the death that came from the north. So young, to be depended on. She could not have been more than seven and ten.

They went on talking awhile, each sharing a piece of information as it occurred to them, and as the light faded and the evening air coming in off the water made the dark room colder, a few more tables were brought into the hall, and they supped on a dinner made from provisions sent from the small fishing village at the other end of the island. It was a humble meal, but every bite was warming, and the ale well spiced and welcome. 

In their pleasant merriment in this foreign hall, one could almost forget the circumstances that brought them there. Tyrion made a light insinuating jest to Clegane, who sat beside Sansa, and the group chuckled, and Jaime smiled along, but his thoughts drifted away to King’s Landing, to the battle they would soon find there, and to Cersei. What did Cersei dine on tonight, he wondered? Wine, no doubt, wine and solitude. Jaime felt a wave of lightheadedness come over him. The drink, probably, too much and too quickly. He stood from the table and left through the great door to a small, sparse courtyard guarded by a twisting stone statue of a dragon. The air smelled faintly of pine.

“You’re a loud thinker,” came Arya’s voice. 

“You’ve got quiet feet.” Jaime glanced at her as she moved to stand beside him. “Why aren’t you inside with your Gendry?” 

She let out a small laugh. “Why aren’t you inside with your Brienne?”

He rolled his shoulders lightly, feigning ease, but she’d caught him out just as easily as he had teased her. _Your Brienne_ buzzed between his ears, insistent. He drove it away.

“Wanted to see the stars,” he said, and he gestured up at the sky. For the last many days they’d had nothing but clouds, and though he truly only came out of doors for the silence and for the air, the bright white pricks of the stars above them were breathtaking. Jaime felt their judgment as they shone down on him, and he relished their coldness. 

“Cersei has to be killed,” he said. His voice was abrupt in the stillness of the garden and the far off crashing of waves on the shore. Jaime heard himself swallow. “She won’t relent. She’ll remove everyone in her path, until there’s nothing left, only death.”

Arya watched him, waiting.

“If Snow…if Jon and his queen mean to take King’s Landing and fight off the dead, they’ll need to…She’s not just some idle threat,” Jaime warned. “She’ll have already heard about their movements, and she’ll have a plan to weaken them in some way. She won’t let them _win,_ because that’s how she sees it, and she’s consumed by it. She thinks it’s about winning or losing. Cersei will let them all die, and be happier for it.”

“I know.”

“They’ll need you. No one else could get in.”

“ _You_ could,” she said, gently.

He looked at her then, this small, sad woman who had seen so much. She looked like a child, though from her stories she had long since stopped being one. And she was right, in a way. Cersei loved him still, and with a mere word would let him past the city gates and into the heart of her chambers. He imagined her perfumed fingers digging through his hair. Her eyes full of hate as steel flashed between them.

“I can’t,” he answered. His stomach turned. The stars burned down. _Judge me,_ he thought. _Go on and mark me like the rest have._ “But someone must.”

It was some time later that Jaime made his way up the winding stair that led to the tower where he had been told Tyrion made his chambers. He swung the door open without knocking, and he found his brother there writing before a hearth. Tyrion’s hand stilled on the parchment a moment, then he dipped the quill back into its pot and moved his stool away from the table.

“Brother,” he said, his voice happy. “Wondered when you’d come. Sit down.” Tyrion gestured to a chair beside the hearth, which Jaime sank into. There was the pop of a winecork, and Tyrion offered him a glass.

“What’s troubling you?” Tyrion asked. He had dragged his stool to sit across from Jaime, and perched there now, regarding him with care. Tyrion had the gift of cleverness with people; he always knew what was in their hearts. Jaime wished he would only look away from his, just now. 

“I’ve spoken with Arya Stark about Cersei,” he admitted. The words came of their own volition yet floated out above him as though they were far away and voiced by anyone other than him.

Tyrion had been swirling his wine idly in its glass. His wrist stilled.

“What have you told her?” Tyrion said. Jaime felt his brow pinch together; Tyrion knew what he’d told her, but he asked anyway. _Why? You know as well as I do. Only neither of us want to look at it._

“How to get in,” he said. “How to get to her.”

Tyrion took a long drink of his wine.

“That was wise, Jaime,” he said at last, lowering his glass from his lips. A faint stain stayed there, a blot of blooded red.

Jaime felt his stomach lurch again and he drank to quell it. The wine washed down his throat and prickled on his tongue. “I’ll be killing her,” he said, tilting the dark liquid in its cup. “It’ll be me doing it. I set it in motion. I’ve done it.” 

Tyrion’s hand settled on top of his. His small fingers found Jaime’s and squeezed them tightly, and Jaime made himself lift his eyes to his brother’s.

“If we’re to avoid a pointless war in the capital, it’s the only way,” Tyrion consoled. “I might have thought of it myself, only—” 

“Only you’re not wretched enough to? Only you wouldn’t?” Jaime withdrew his hand from his brother’s, eying him down the length of his nose. He felt his breath rise shakily in his chest.

“ _No_ ,” Tyrion cut back. “I was not _brave_ enough. To see it.” His voice softened. “I had truly hoped…I had thought…”

“She lied, Tyrion. Remember?” Jaime thought of the conversation he shared with his brother in Winterfell. They had believed Cersei, and she had laughed at them all. And he thought of King Aerys stumbling up the stairs to the throne, still shouting, _Burn them, burn them all_ , even as Jaime’s sword drove itself into his back, and he remembered how, as he had wrenched him round to cut his throat so he might stop his shouting, the king had fallen against him, and his weight in his arms had been nothing more than that of a pitiful, dying old man. Jaime grimaced. “It’s not bravery, Tyrion, _gods_. I’ve never been that.”

Tyrion regarded him over the lip of his glass. Firelight gleamed in his eyes. “Oh, but you have, Jaime,” he said, gently. “Almost always.” 

Jaime opened his mouth to protest, but Tyrion interrupted, his voice climbing in volume and lightness, “Now then, when were you going to tell me you had fallen in love with the lady Brienne of Tarth?” 

He stared while his little brother took a long drink of his wine. Jaime’s head ached.

“No, don’t be surprised,” Tyrion went on, though with a little more gentleness than he’d begun, “you’re not so opaque as perhaps you’d hope, dear brother.” 

“I love her, yes,” he bit back in answer. It was the first time he had said it aloud, and some part of him fluttered to hear the words fly so freely from his lips, but the rest him felt wretched. Jaime rubbed his good palm against his brow and sighed.

“Jaime,” said Tyrion, and though Jaime had shut his eyes he could feel his brother watching him. “Neither of us want to see Cersei die. We’ve both loved her—” Jaime’s eyes flew open at that, and he glared at his brother for even daring to utter the words. Tyrion frowned, sheepish, but undeterred. “—We’ve loved her, despite her every reason she’s so kindly given us over the years not to. But she’s not…she’s less herself, now, Jaime. She’s less herself and more herself than ever, all at once. And she won’t allow a world that topples this high perch she’s made for herself. We have to think of the future now, of a world that bears surviving. Cersei doesn’t want to survive it. Jaime. You know that.”

“It doesn’t make it any less hateful,” he said.

“It doesn’t,” Tyrion agreed. Jaime gazed across at his brother. They both thought of their father, he knew. It went unsaid between them. Jaime sighed out once again, a deep, winded breath, and he drank from the glass and found its bottom quickly. He stood, and the blood rushed to head as he walked to the table and set the emptied glass upon it.

“Don't go,” pleaded his brother, softly. “Stay and talk with me a while longer.”

Jaime gave a brusque shake of his head, and he went out the door.

The world pitched this way and that as he wound his way through the damp, dark castle of the dragonlords, his hands feeling the walls.

After walking for what felt like hours, he found the small garrison door, though his thoughts had become no clearer, and the insistent ache in his head grew ever stronger, and Jaime pushed it open and found Brienne inside, her sleeping form just a smoky shadow in the dark. He saw her turn beneath her coverlet to look at him, and as her eyes settled on him and faint recognition dawned over her face, he had half a mind to turn back, flee, go anywhere but into her arms, but Jaime was weak. 

She drew the coverlet down for him, and he stretched himself out beside her, feeling oddly buoyant, like the only thing that tethered him was the nearness of her body. They lay in darkness, listening to each other’s breath, when she observed, “You’re drunk.”

“I am, a bit.” He could almost not bear to let her see him; he wanted to bury himself away in the broad stretch of her shoulders, shut himself to the world, just so long as he could cling on to her, take some of her warmth, her goodness. His voice was small as he said, “Will you send me away?”

 

 


	28. Brienne XV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, I'm sorry, I feel like these get more and more gloomy as I go, but we have a lot of wounded territory to cover first. :( Happiness...awaits? somewhere? soon.
> 
> Thanks as ever for your patience as I continue.

Her tongue was thick in her mouth; she struggled to make her mind move.

It might be the end of her, if she let this go on. If somehow, against everything, she still lived, if the both of them lived, and she did not stop it, Brienne knew she would tip down into a private sorrow she had not visited since she released Renly from her heart. And even after all these years, she could still discover that lineage of feeling by only reaching down within herself and searching for the memory of his laughing face, of the sweep of his hand at the small of her back as he led her on the stones to dance and shielded her from the jeers of the rest, and the old fondness would nurse itself like a flame to wood, smoking up gently and mixing its warmth with the scorn of burning. Renly was gone and she had avenged him, but it was not Stannis’ death that quelled her. It gave her some relief perhaps to know she had accomplished what she set out to do, but Brienne had grown wiser than the guileless girl who swore herself to that task. She had long since learned killing Stannis would not bring Renly back, and it would not extinguish evil from the world, and it would not mend that girl’s heart. No, her peace had come instead from the simple turn of time. Time had shown her how frivolous Renly’s designs had been, however wonderful, however much she loved him and wanted glory for him then. And time made plain that any touch or kind word from him had been like rain to a disused garden; her affection for him had been misplaced, but it was also inevitable as weeds springing up out of the ground for light and for life. She had forgiven the girl that. 

The sorrow, though, she remembered, and it would be worse with Jaime, the walls of that sadness grown higher and the depths of its pit deeper and blacker, without any floor beneath to stop her falling. If she listened for it within herself, she could already hear it, the great dark wind gusting up from below, threatening to take her down into it as he slid into bed beside her and tipped his perfect face conspiratorially toward her. It would be worse with Jaime, because this thing within her had gone past infatuation. She had lain with him. She had opened herself to him entirely, and now it as though her entire body was one trembling, raw nerve, alive with fear and longing.

“You’re drunk,” she accused.

“I am, a bit,” he said. Brienne listened to her breath course in and out. His lips parted open, though he grimaced more than smiled. “Will you send me away?”

She considered this, chewing her cheek.

She ought to. She ought to send him out of her bed and out of her thoughts. _Out of my heart._ Her tooth caught the inside of her cheek and tore the soft flesh there, opening a pang of iron on her tongue.

In the time since she had known Jaime Lannister, how often and with what success had she driven him from her mind? Brienne hugged her arms about herself. The pit opened wider for her to fall.

“No,” she said, at last, a whisper.

His lips were on her then, pressing ardently at her jaw, her neck, her chin, before landing at her mouth, and she sighed into him, her body which had held so rigid releasing to a drowsy, pooling heat. At her response, he pried a hand to her waist, and she turned her hips to his until they clung flush to each other. Unbidden, her thoughts rushed to the Bolton men and the terrible days they had passed tied face to face in the saddle. The lovers, the men had called them, and the memory of the word and the way they’d sneered it sent a shudder through her. She grasped Jaime’s shoulders, and his tongue darted hot over her own before he prized her lower lip a moment between his teeth, then titled ever so slightly away.

He was watching her, waiting. She opened her eyes. His hand was in her hair, and their hips still pressed together. Brienne flushed. Her thoughts warred again. _I’m making myself into a fool. Am I so wanton?_  

“Why have you come here,” she gritted out.

His eyes were dark.

“You must know by now.”

“There are other beds,” she said. Other beds and other women more fit to warm them. But as soon as she’d said it, she heard the echo in her voice from so long ago; _There’s another tub_ , Brienne had protested as he lowered himself into the oily water. He hadn’t cared then. He’d only sank down into the bath and replied, _This one suits me fine._

At the time, she wasn’t sure whether, seeing her nakedness, he aimed primarily to humiliate her at once or to stockpile greater insult to humiliate her later. She had judged both likely and was wrong on both counts, for he harbored no intentions of mocking her but only wanted her trust. Jaime had found himself in need of a friend, of a fellow man-at-arms, and he had placed that need in her. _It’s the same now, isn’t it? He wants nearness, and I am near…_ After all they had seen and fought through together, it hardly shocked her or occurred to her to be somehow wrong. She trusted him with her life, and she knew he did the same. The years had bound them together, and had forged a friendship between them so exquisite, so engrained, that she was pained to think on it. And deeper, further down, hidden at the bottom of the pit where Brienne so badly did not want to go, there was the fact of Cersei and their sordid affair. They were close, yes, blindingly close to one another, but she would never be Cersei…she could never clutch on to a beauty so great as that. Nor an intimacy as terrible. But she could not think of that; jealousy burned inside her at the memory of Cersei in the Red Keep, her wispy, womanly frame enrobed in red as bright as bleeding.

“Brienne,” he said, startling her out of her thoughts. Her name was low in his voice, a gentle growl of warning. But he only sighed, and his hand dropped through her hair to her temples, which he brushed with his fingertips before he drew away and let the tension go slack between their bodies.

“This whole damned castle has the drip,” he complained. Though Brienne saw the corners of his mouth tug lightly in a smile, there was something altogether sad in Jaime’s voice. His eyes reflected this as he gave a small shake of his head against the pillow and said, “The night is cold, and your arms are warm. I’ve need of you, Brienne, please don’t banish me from your bed.”

The words stung into her, a reproach just as painful as when he had called her beautiful. He had no laughter in his voice, true, and she trusted him enough to know he was somehow serious, but still there was the threat of her deeper disbelief. _It will be worse, with Jaime…_ she thought again. Her brow creased. _Worse, because he does not know how he tempts my heart. Worse, because I love him._

The little word of loveoccurred to her not like a thunderous strike of light, nor a happy discovery as finding ground beneath her feet or falling into some great comfort. No, it was more like looking on a sad, coiled creature, all fuzzed in earth. She saw it within herself, and her throat scratched with feeling, with regret, disdain, and disappointment at the homely, brown thing that had lain sleeping so long in the hollow at her breast.

Brienne made her hand move to touch him, catching her fingertips along the sharp cut of his jaw she loved— _loved_ —so well. Her teeth clenched as she fought for the thing to say.

“Stay, then,” she managed.

Jaime found her fingers at his jaw and clutched them within his own. A shiver raked through her, and she shifted her shoulders and hips toward him, so that they might lay closer. But Jaime was shifting too, moving up to lean his brow insistently against her shoulder, and at his light pressure she rolled onto her back and let him settle there, his breath coming sweetly at her collarbones.

Brienne drew in her breath and enclosed him in her arms. Hours went by, and the light crossed the wall of the little room as the night dropped fitfully to blue then yellow then grey. All the while she was watching that small brown creature within her, which loved.

When dawn at last came, she shook away from him gently, turning to tuck the blankets closer around his sleeping body before she went. Then she was away, finding a torch and taking it with her to help guide her way through the dark corridors of Dragonstone.

It was some time later that she passed a serving girl hauling hot water. When asked, the girl said she was taking the water to Lady Sansa and that Brienne might follow her to her quarters.

The girl was petite, with blunt plaits of hair that shone like copper. She looked scarce more than ten years old, and rose only a little past Brienne’s thigh.

“May I help you with your pail?” Brienne asked. The girl shied from her, clutching the pail closer.

“It’s my last one,” she answered, a haughty little climb in her voice.

Brienne fought down a smile. “Very good, then.”

It was a short ways from there to Sansa’s quarters. As the girl slipped inside with her water, Brienne was pleased to find Sandor standing outside her door, his arm resting on the hilt of his sword. She nodded her head to him, and he inclined his in response.

The girl came out not a moment later, her now-empty pail in hand.

“Lady Sansa says you may go in while she has her bath,” she said, bending at the knee in a short curtsy. The gesture felt altogether wasted on Brienne, but she gave her a polite bow of her head in response, smiling as she watched the girl hurry away. _Where did she live, I wonder, before the night came? A child of Winter Town or Barrowton or Karhold, come all this way south?_ If it were not for the war, lowborn girls of her sort would grow up and die in the same little village of their birth. The happiness of that simplicity would have been now taken from her. Brienne could only hope she would find a new life.

She shut the door behind her and loitered there.

“Good morning, Brienne,” said Sansa lightly as she sank into her bath. 

“My lady,” she answered.

“You were seeking me?”

“Yes,” said Brienne as the woman ran a cloth over her arms and shoulders. “I hoped to find you alone, that I might ensure you were well.”

Sansa seemed to consider that a moment. “I am,” she said. The water sloshed in the tub. “But, tell me, Bran…Arya said he was the one that brought the dragon into the bay at White Harbor.”

“He was,” she said. “Ironborn and northerners alike have nothing but that tale on their tongues.” It was true; on the _Bracken_ she had heard them singing a new song of Lord Snow’s battle in the sky and how he defeated the ice dragon in a crush of talons and fire. The song ended in the dragon’s long plummet into the sea, and already there was talk of calling the waters where it fell Dragonsdown Bay. What the people did not know, though, was that it had not been Jon that felled the dragon, but Bran—from many miles away, and from within.

Sansa made a small humming sound in her throat, her eyes glossing over with tears that she did not permit to fall.

“Lord Howland’s men stayed with him,” Brienne assured her, more quietly. “Arya asked that he be burned. Kerill will have seen to his rites at Hornwood.”

If Bran had given some word to carry to his sister, Brienne might have passed it then, to give her some comfort. But the Three-Eyed Raven had sent her with nothing, and so Sansa’s family grew ever smaller. Brienne looked to her empty hands and frowned.

“Thank you,” Sansa said, bringing Brienne’s eyes up from the floor. She cupped some water in her fingers and dropped it over her breast before dipping her hand in again and running the trickle over her face. She wiped at her eyes. “For caring for him, and for taking him all that way." 

“And you, my lady? You had a hard journey,” she said, her intent trailing. Sansa had seen battle, yes, she had seen a great many terrors, but none would touch the slaughter within her home, or the long chase of the dead as their party escaped to White Harbor.

“I…” started Sansa. She gave a shake of her head, then tipped her head back into her bath and wet her hair. It bloomed out around her head in a halo of auburn waves. She resurfaced, sighing, and gently patted some oils into her hair before wringing it out over the water. “Well, it’s done,” she said, “we’ve made it this far. Perhaps we’ll survive another day.”

 _If we live, you’ll have Winterfell back_ , thought Brienne. _You’ll be lady of its halls once more, and the people will bring sweet smelling harvests to your feet._  

At that, another thought occurred to her. “My lady,” said Brienne, but Sansa interjected as she climbed out of her bath and donned a thick robe of quilted grey and silver, saying, “Sansa. If you would.”

Brienne felt her brow twitch up at that little gift of familiarity. It warmed her, even though Sansa had long ago dropped the courtesy before her own name. She bowed her head.

“Sansa,” she began again. “Lord Howland’s news. Did he have the fortune to tell your…to tell Jon before he disappeared?”

“No, he did not. Tyrion spoke true, we have not seen Lord Howland since the stone door beyond the godswood. It isn’t known whether he lived or perished that night. But the message must be given to Jon.”

“He does not yet know?” 

“No,” said Sansa, cinching the ribbon about her waist. “But I intend to tell him.”

It was not often Brienne intervened in her affairs, but the castle teemed with advisors, and none of them sworn to Sansa. She trusted now she would not greatly overstep by asking after her plans. Sansa would require someone to keep her confidence.

“They are blood,” Brienne said slowly, “nephew and aunt. What will happen when he learns? Will he accept this story?”

Sansa took up a chair by the shuttered window and cracked it open, letting the cold air rush in from the sea.

“Jon has wanted his whole life to know his mother,” she said, her gaze drifting out to the grey flats of water sparkling under the early morning sun. “He may be startled to learn that she was no stranger to our home, but our lost aunt, Lyanna. Maybe even more to learn he shares kin with the dragon queen herself. But if Jon is the man I’ve come to know, he is honorable, and he will do what is best for us all. I’ll ask that he make a formal alliance with Daenerys Targaryen in marriage.” She let out a little sigh. “Gods willing, he’ll accept the match.”

Brienne regarded her carefully. It was difficult to restrain her thoughts from Jaime and Cersei, from the jealousy and disgust that did battle within her like a storm on a sea. But it was like the Targaryen line to mix and to marry between themselves—to keep their strange connection with the dragonblood. _It’s different, and not so close as siblings. As brother and twin._ Her stomach pitched again.

“Are you all right?” asked Sansa, looking up from the glittering water.

“Yes,” she said. She swallowed thickly and bade her nerves to settle. “You think of the future, my lady.” She shook her head. “Sansa.” 

Sansa nodded. A discerning smile curved over her small, plump lips. “Someone must, albeit aspirationally. Tyrion and I have been discussing it, and he will propose the same to Daenerys. For too long the north has not had a true friend in the capital to hear its needs or represent its interests. I will secure that friendship, for the unity of the seven kingdoms to thrive once again.”

“How will they rule? She seems intent on being queen, and he seems intent not to trespass on her plans.”

“They may rule together, if they like,” said Sansa. “It’s time anyway the kingdoms saw a king and queen that were equal in match, and both suited to the task, don’t you think?” She rolled her shoulders. “Jon doesn’t want the throne, he’ll want it no more than my father did. But he is a king all the same. No one can deny that now.” 

Two maids came in then to dress Sansa, and she stood from her perch by the window, moving behind a screen beside which a pretty brazier of coiled filigree steel burned.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Brienne,” she said from behind the screen as the women helped her step into her gown, “about your own future. What would you want from it?”

Though her lady could not see, Brienne found herself shaking her head. The future was too difficult for her to see, hidden beyond too much promise of battle, and blood, and grief. “I’ve no designs,” she said lowly.

There was the sound of the women's hands pulling tight the laces of Sansa’s gown, and far off the lapping of water at the shore, when Sansa’s voice came.

“I wondered if you might accept a marriage proposal of my own, to your favored Lannister.”

The smoke off the brazier made her head dizzy; she squinted in the hazy light of the room, her breath caught. When Brienne said nothing, Sansa stepped out from behind her screen, shooing the women away. They slid from the room, shutting the door behind them as she moved to stand before her. Sansa smiled uncertainly.

“I had thought you might not enjoy the suggestion,” she confessed. “You are a warrior, and you have not chosen this life…” she motioned to the room and its modest dressings with a vagueness, though Brienne took her gesture to mean me, you have not chosen to look or to live like me, but that was a ridiculous thought, as Brienne could never look or live as Sansa did.  _I am not the daughter my father should have had. If the gods had been kind, he ought to have been given a sweetling girl, a girl who was light of step and quick with mirth and wit, but he got me instead._ Brienne bit down on her cheek where she’d opened it before.  _I ought to write to my father before I have no chance left to reach him_. Tarth was not far now, only a light two day’s sail away from the sister isles of Dragonstone and Driftmark. The air even smelt the same, the salt that stung her tongue tasted of home. And suddenly she could not deny it: she had been selfish to keep her life from her father, all for the shame that she could not be the daughter he might have deserved. She had been ashamed, but he loved her anyway, he always had, her poor, cross father. Brienne’s throat felt dry and her cheeks flush as she resolved silently to seek out Samwell and ask him for the rookery.

“…I don’t wish to hem you into it,” Sansa was saying. “But I’d ask you to consider it. The stormlands have been rudderless since the War of the Five Kings, and bringing the west into peaceful alliance with a friend so dear as you would be no small service to my house and to the whole of the kingdoms.”

Brienne blinked the smoke from her eyes. “Ser Jaime…he could not ever accept, you must know that,” she said, the words slow and heavy on her tongue. She had not slept well in the night, and now fatigue crushed over her. She felt too tired to explain all the many reasons Jaime could not and should not have her hand in marriage, but surely Sansa was clever enough to understand on her own why her proposal was fated to fail. If he wanted marriage at all, he should have the hand of a beautiful highborn lady of equal or greater house. The match Sansa had imagined  _was_ politically sound, Brienne could assent to that, but little else about it made sense. There were other ladies that would help bring the country to a happy fold.  _If we will live,_ she thought again, bitterly.  _If this ends._ Her mind swam.

But Sansa had not freed her from her gaze. She moved to Brienne, putting a hand on her sleeve and seeking her hand, which she held, and Brienne looked up into her waiting eyes. 

“Oh, I believe he would.” Sansa smiled.

“Sansa,” she said.  _Please_ , she thought with misery, _please don’t make me say_ , but from the unbroken smile that still lingered on the woman’s mouth, Brienne understood that she must. Inside her, the fuzzed little thing of love drifted up as on a breeze, and obstinately Brienne pushed it back down. She'd bury it with walls of stone, if she must. She'd fence it in where nothing could reach it, nothing could touch it, nothing could ever pry it free. “He couldn’t _love_ me, don’t you see,” she said, her voice cracking on the warm syllable of the word. “ _None_ of them could. I’ll not force him into marriage with someone so objectionable.” 

Something passed behind the cool blue eyes of Sansa Stark. Her heavy lashes fell and opened against her cheeks. 

“Is that what you think?”

Sansa released her hand.

“I know a man in love, Brienne.”

The handmaid with copper hair arrived with a tray of hot porridge and honey and salt fish. Sansa sat before the brazier to take her breakfast. She cracked the spoon softly against the plate to smack the stream of honey from it, and as it fell into her porridge she caught a bead of the sweet golden liquid and tasted it from her finger. More to herself than to Brienne, Sansa remarked in a serene tone, “If you asked me, I might tell you I believed he would have no one else.”

Brienne bristled, heat roaring up her spine. But a messenger came into the room at Sandor’s permission, pronouncing that two dragons had been sighted off the cape at Crackclaw Point, and that Lady Meera Reed and several thousand of her people had sailed down the Green Fork, making it known they congregated south of Maidenpool. Lady Reed had sent word that she rode for Rook’s Rest and would be with them in just two day’s time. A council will be convened upon her arrival, and then, Brienne assumed, it would be war.

 

 


	29. Brienne XVI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the author remembers Alys Karstark and Lyanna Mormont exist.  
> lmao sorry. It's hard to fit everybody in.

Brienne’s hair had grown long. As she walked the corridors looking for Samwell Tarly, she passed before a many-paned window which looked out over the cliffs, and the flicker of movement at the corner of her eye slowed her. She turned to look and discovered herself there in the glass, split between the panes.

She remembered the first time she cut her hair. It was the night before she sailed from Tarth, and she paced alone in her chambers, unable to sleep. She and her father had fought that afternoon in his solar. He pleaded with her to stay, told her she could find a suitable marriage when she was older, whenever she pleased if it meant she would only remain at home. But Renly’s bannermen were already following fast behind him, and she would not rest on her cheery little isle when every day she was reminded of the life that would never belong to her. When he at last understood there was nothing he could say to persuade her, Selwyn only clutched her tightly in an embrace. _They won’t accept you_ , he told her, running his big hand over her flaxy waves of hair. _But you must never forget yourself, you understand me?_

 _They won’t accept you_. Brienne’s hands had trembled as she found the little knife at her hip with the blue stone set into its hilt, her father’s gift to her the summer past. Sapphire, she called it. A single tear split from her eye as she braced its edge to the hair and cut. 

The woman standing now before her in the reflection was pale with grief, the faint edges of a bruise fading at her temple, and the chop of blonde hair that she normally pushed back against her skull fell forward and curved behind her ears, tickling her jaw. There was a kind of terrible grace to this woman. Brienne hardly recognized her.

She was still staring when Sam nearly collided into her. The stout, red-cheeked man looked up from the book in his arms and a smile cracked over his face.

“Oh, Lady Brienne,” he said amicably in greeting, starting past her. 

“Wait,” she called after him, and he turned, his smile folding to one of surprise.

“Your rookery, please, I’d like to send a raven to Evenfall Hall,” she said, feeling suddenly breathless.

“Of course,” Sam said with a pleased little nod, “I’m just going there myself. We’ve sent a shipment of dragonglass weapons to the riverlords, you see.” He clutched at several scrolls that he balanced atop his book. “Some have received them already and are waiting for the next news from Dragonstone.” 

Brienne listened to his happy prattling, though her thoughts drifted to Tarth…its sapphire waters, its markets swelling with chatter and the day’s fish, its waving meadows of cow parsley, harebell, and cornflower spicing the air.

By the time they reached the rookery, Brienne had already drafted the letter in her head, and she wrote quickly with Sam’s proffered quill. Only at its end her hand hesitated, but then she signed:

 _I have missed my place beside you.  
_ _Your loving daughter_

_Brienne_

There was a great raucous stirring within the castle as Brienne and Sam climbed their way down from the tower where the dragonlords kept their rookery, and they exchanged a glance. _The king and queen will be returning._ Tarly seemed to think the same; he moved his book beneath his arm so that they might descend the stairs at a quicker pace. They sped together into the great hall to find Daenerys had assumed her throne of striated, wind-cut stone, with Jon standing at her shoulder, his hand resting lightly there as they shared a smile. 

Tormund, Beric, Jaime, Sansa, Clegane, several northern lords, and the advisors were all stood there, Tyrion and Davos clashing flagons of wine and ale together. Yara Greyjoy clapped Theon on the shoulder and drank heartily from her own mug.

“What’s happened,” asked Sam, adding belatedly as he looked between Snow and his queen, “er, your grace?”

“Euron Greyjoy’s fleet has been taken,” said Tyrion. His teeth flashed in a smile, though Brienne thought she saw something else flicker in his eyes. She looked from Tyrion to his brother, and she found Jaime staring back, the concern writ plain on his face.  

“Destroyed is the word you were searching for,” boasted Yara. She made a small bow at her waist before lifting her ale high. The queen beamed down at her. “The rest of the ships that didn’t burn have been captured for Queen Daenerys.” 

Daenerys tipped her chin in a nod. 

“Queen Daenerys!” the room shouted, the northern lords among them. Even little Lyanna Mormont and solemn-faced Alys Karstark gave a hearty cheer. Jon Snow smiled. 

Later on, when the excitement died down, Brienne watched as Jaime slipped from the room to the terraced courtyard that housed a twisting statue of a dragon pointing toward the sky. As Queen Daenerys and her party were otherwise occupied in conversation, Tyrion went after him, and after a moment’s thought, Brienne followed.

“…She will be shaken by this, don’t you see? She cannot hope to win now,” Tyrion was saying in a low voice. 

“It’s too late, she won’t _surrender_ ,” Jaime whispered back, and Brienne hesitated when she understood they were talking of their sister. Ropes of jealousy and fear whipped up her throat, but the loose stone of the courtyard turned beneath her foot, and the Lannister brothers were already looking up to see who intruded, Tyrion’s face washing briefly with worry before fading back to a more genial look that Brienne found difficult to read.

Jaime sighed to see her, rifling a hand through his hair. Heat bloomed across her cheeks.

_Be strong, Brienne. Do not forget yourself._

“Cersei,” she made herself say. The name was a question in her voice. Jaime looked away from her, frowning.

“Yes,” said Tyrion. He held out a hand to her, beckoning her closer. Cautiously she came. “Our sister continues to be a dangerous opponent to the queen. This victory at sea will weaken Cersei’s defenses considerably.”

“But you don’t believe that,” Brienne said.

The younger Lannister’s mouth twitched as though he might say something, but Jaime answered for him.

“Cersei has few friends left in this world. With Euron killed and her fleet taken, she’ll act out. What Daenerys did was rash.”

“What Daenerys did was _war_ ,” Tyrion corrected in a whisper.

Jaime shook his head, his voice grave. “She doesn’t understand Cersei, she doesn’t understand what she will do. No one seems to understand. Have you lost all your wits for your love of this queen, brother?”

Brienne looked between the two men. “What do you mean, Jaime?” she asked quietly. “What do you think will happen?”

Jaime met her eyes at last. Her heart pounded in her chest. He was so near, she could reach out and wrap her arms around him. But it wasn’t Brienne who reached for him, it was Tyrion. He placed a hand at his brother’s sleeve. 

Jaime wrenched his arm from the touch, and she noticed then that he wasn’t wearing his golden hand.

“Cersei will make sure someone feels her pain,” he spat. “There are caches of wildfire hidden all over King’s Landing, placed by Aerys and his damned alchemists. She knows about it by now, and so do you, Tyrion. You’ve told me as much. What makes you think she won’t use it?” 

“Jaime, haven’t you noticed?” Tyrion’s voice was quiet, small. “Arya Stark has been missing more than a day now.”

Something tightened in Jaime’s eyes at the mention of Arya. He turned and stalked away from them into the evening light; Brienne listened as his footfall faded and was lost to the waves of laughter rolling out from the hall. That night he did not come looking for her in her bed.

When Meera arrived the next day, a light snow had begun to fall, and braziers had been set all along the long stretch of the great hall where the lords and knights gathered to warm themselves. Brienne stood beside Sandor at Sansa’s shoulder, but she could not restrain her stare from wandering across the hall to where Jaime stood between Beric and Gendry. He looked scarcely there, as though his soul had left his body behind. Brienne worried her lip between her teeth, her eyes only leaving him when Meera approached the dramatic stone dias where Jon and Daenerys presided over the hall. 

The slender girl had twisted her curls into a knot at the nape of her neck. She laid her quiver and bow of silver wood at the floor before her as she knelt.

“Lady Reed,” rang Daenerys’ pretty voice. “We are glad to receive you into our walls.”

Jon stepped forward, descending the stair to her. He bent down and clasped her at the arm, and Brienne watched as the young woman lifted her gaze to his and let him bring her up from the floor.

“Your father was a friend to us always,” said Jon.

They remained clasped at the arms as they stood together.

“And you will always have my friendship,” Brienne heard her say.

Jon nodded, and they parted. Daenerys looked on, a slight smile still lingering over her lips. “What news do you bring us?”

Meera looked about herself. Her eyes drifted over the crowd until landing on Brienne.

“I have brought my people south, but we only narrowly avoided the march of the dead. Many others have fallen. While we sailed the Fork, I sent scouts in every direction to seek out villages and homesteads to warn them to safety. Some thousands now are camped in the forests south of Maidenpool. They are largely smallfolk and minor houses, your grace, and the majority of them are not ready of sword or bow, but they have heard the tales of the northern battles. Many of them will fight with you. They need only weapon and command.”

“Good,” said Daenerys. She glanced to Jon.

“We will send men to meet them not far from Rook’s Rest,” he said. “Tell them to organize there and await the northern delegation. Mormont and Karstark and Manderly will lead the party from there to King’s Landing when it is time.”

“And the weapons?” asked Daenerys.

Gendry took a careful step forward. “Your grace, the smiths have been working the dragonglass and steel night and day. We will have enough weapons to send with the northern party to Rook’s Rest.” 

The dragon queen gave a short, pleased nod.

A little cough came from the end of the hall then, and the entire room shifted to look as Samwell Tarly came striding as quick as he could into the room, a scroll clutched inside a trembling fist.

“What is it, Sam?” said Jon.

He wiped a hand at his brow, struggling for breath. “N-news,” he said. “F-from the capital. Your graces.” 

Brienne looked to Jaime. The color had gone from his face.

Tyrion took the scroll gently from the man’s hands and lifted it to read its message. He blinked, then climbed the dais to where his queen sat waiting. He leaned to murmur something into her ear, and at her nod, he turned to face their crowd.

“There have been a series of explosions of wildfire within King’s Landing. It is assumed hundreds of innocents have been killed.” He glanced at Jaime, his jaw moving. He went on. “The people of the capital have risen against Queen Cersei in a violent series of riots in retaliation. It is said she has been disposed of. The people now cry out Daenerys’ name and call her queen.”

The hall erupted in confounded and joyful cries of celebration. Missandei, the friend and advisor of the queen, wept openly, clapping her hands together. Brienne joined their applause with some reluctance, watching Jaime all the while.

 _Don’t do anything reckless_ , she prayed. If he left the room just then it would not be missed, and even grief for his family would not excuse him from the wrath of reputation. They trusted him little enough already. But Jaime remained fixed where he stood, a ghost within his skin.

Daenerys raised a hand. They quieted.

“Then they shall have a new queen. And a new king.”

Brienne’s gaze snapped up from Jaime to flit between Daenerys, Jon, and finally Sansa, who stood before her. Daenerys stood from her throne, descending the dais to tenderly take her lover’s hand in hers.

_So Sansa has told him. She and Tyrion have made their proposition to each of them to join the kingdoms against the dead._

A wan smile broke over Tyrion’s face as the room grew loud again with applause. Daenerys lifted Jon’s hand, and she proclaimed, “My equal, my king, Jon Snow.” 

It was not the name Brienne was expecting. Surely, she had thought his parentage would be made known to the people. But when she looked to Sansa, and the side of her calm face brooked no surprise, she came to understand that perhaps this had been decided to preserve the fragile peace already brokered between the northerners and the rest, and to keep Daenerys’ unique claim to her reign. _Without his true name proclaimed to be Targaryen, he will not threaten her. Ned Stark died with the secret, and it will remain a secret always._

As the war council dissolved into celebration and cup bearers brought trays of ale and wine to the eager crowds, Jaime at last broke from the room, and with a word to Sandor Brienne was at his heels, her stomach churning. She would corner him, sweep him away somewhere quiet, where she would try to hear him, comfort him if her would have her. But as she walked, a brisk hand caught her softly at her elbow, and Brienne turned to see Meera Reed had hurried beside her.

“Lady Meera,” she said, her breath short.

“Meera,” the younger woman replied, “just Meera’s all right.” 

“It’s good to see you well,” said Brienne. She looked about herself. They stood to the side in a dark corridor beneath an arch. Jaime was already well away.

“And you,” said Meera. 

She was Bran’s friend, Brienne made herself recall. From before. Before he stopped being Bran. Her anxiousness to find Jaime slipped from her slowly, and she met the girl’s waiting brown eyes. 

“I’m very sorry about Bran,” she said.

Meera smiled sadly.

“I am, as well.” 

“And your father?” 

Meera gave a small shake of her head. She let her hand fall from where she had touched Brienne at the elbow.

“Listen, I’ve come to tell you. The dream I had before, of you, and Jaime. At the moor. I only knew then that it was a knight in blue armor and a handless man who followed him. I had no way of knowing it was you, only my father helped me to understand its meaning once I told him I dreamt it every night. I never had the greensight before, Brienne. I believe I still don’t have it, though once I had thought when Jojen died the one dream passed to me. I see now that it wasn’t Jojen. It was Bran. He was talking to me, somehow, in my dreams. He was trying to make me see.”

Brienne thought of the fight at the moors, the way the broken men had surrounded her and Pod. They hadn’t a chance. _I might have died that day, had her people not watched for me._ The sting of Podrick’s absence revisited her, and she bit back a fresh bout of tears. _I will not cry. Not now._

Meera was watching her.  
  
“I’ve had another dream,” she said softly when she saw Brienne had returned from her thoughts. “I think he wanted me to see this part, too. To tell you, privately, when it was safe. When he couldn't be found. It’s…you. Brienne. You have to end it. You’ll have to kill their king.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sidenote, I could not in all my drafts figure out a way to deal with Sam and the Tarlys and Daenerys' little BBQ. So for the simplicity of this story I'm just going forward imagining it never happened.


	30. Jaime XV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y’all, Dany loves a good title. Obviously she and her best bud have to give her boyfriend some. (King in the North just wont cut it for her, sorry Davos)

When they arrived to King’s Landing, the crimson banners Cersei had taken to flying lay trampled in the streets, and the air smelled of ash and the promise of coming snow. 

The smallfolk had toppled the guard and taken the gates, and the city would have been impassible had Daenerys not led them at the party’s head, her two dragons flying above the city. They welcomed her crying her name and waving their stolen spears and swords, and Jaime watched her smooth, round face crack open with joy.

The stink of lye that had been thrown in haste over the corpses burned his throat and stung in his eyes. The city was a tattered ruin, with still-smoldering buildings opened to the sky like jagged mouths, and Jaime was troubled with the feeling that Cersei might be anywhere, that she might be everywhere. They might round a corner and find her strung up in the street, naked and dangling, or perhaps someone would have called for her head to be taken, and he might look up to see her cold eyes boring into him from beyond the veil. Jaime had to press his right arm to his stomach to keep from retching. Brienne rode beside him, though, and he felt her stare fastened to him all during the ride up the hill to the Red Keep. Her watchful presence steadied him.

The great bronze doors of the Red Gate were shuttered when they came. Their parties stilled.

“Who comes,” a Lannister soldier shouted from the gatehouse.

Missandei stepped forward.

“Queen Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name comes to take her throne as the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. She is Queen of Dragonstone, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, and the People’s Regent. She is accompanied by her betrothed, Jon Snow, King in the North and Dragon Prince, the Counsellor of Peace and Messenger of the Second Night. They demand that as the remaining army of the deposed Queen Regent Cersei Lannister you yield the city or suffer the punishment of treason.”

The soldiers hesitated. The one who had called down to them looked to be no older than six and ten, a scrawny youth Jaime did not recognize. _Don’t do anything stupid, boy_ , he thought, _your queen is dead and gone._

Tyrion stepped forward to stand next to Missandei. 

“I, Tyrion Lannister, Hand of the Queen, command that you open the gate and allow our safe passage. Throw down your weapons and stand aside.”

A breeze carried up along the pass, stirring the flags at their posts. But then there was the clatter of a single sword falling to the floor, and then another, and another, and the gate creaked open. 

Jaime parted from the march into the keep with Brienne trailing quietly behind, and he led them to the courtyard which Cersei had decorated with the map of the seven kingdoms. He was half expecting to find her there where he had left her, but when he found it empty of any soul Jaime’s chest collapsed in a sob, and he leaned against the column of Brienne’s body and let himself be held.

Arya Stark stepped soundlessly from between the porticos. She was wearing Qyburn’s robes, he realized, though they were laughably large on her. He drew away from Brienne’s touch, running a hand over his face. 

“Where,” he said.

The Stark woman watched him, a hungry wolf deciding her whim. 

“I’ll take you to her,” she answered.

Brienne clutched his hand suddenly. Jaime looked into her broad face and found the contrary gentleness there that he loved, though beneath her calm he could see her struggling with something.

“Go,” she said, giving his fingers a light squeeze, “you should see her.” Then she turned and went away from him, and Jaime sighed out a haggard breath.

He followed Arya into the shadowed halls, so empty now of whispering ladies and capering lords, and he wondered how long it had been since the walls of the keep had housed any laughter. With a pang of pain he thought of Elia Martell and her two babes. Their gurgling laughter once trailed throughout the halls. They had been hostages of the Mad King Aerys at the end of Robert’s Rebellion, but the children had been too young to understand, with Aegon still in his swaddling clothes and Rhaenys a happy, eager toddler. That had been a bloody change of power, thanks to his father. As Arya led him deeper into the belly of the Red Keep, he thought too of Cersei and her private anguish in her marriage, and of her scorn for the world and everyone in it that had swelled and swelled until nothing could keep it. Until she had become just as monstrous as the very men they once despised together.The further they walked, the hotter Jaime’s ears burned and the faster his heart pounded, and he wanted to turn away, go back up the stairs to the living and to the light, where Brienne waited somewhere among the crowds. But he knew just as well that he had to see her this one last time. _Let it be put to rest._

They descended down a winding stair to the dungeons, then through a narrow niche in the wall which he would have never seen had Arya not waved her torch before it and slid in, telling him to keep close. They followed another stair until they arrived at a large vault where dragon skulls of the old Targaryens rested in disuse. Jaime had not seen them since Robert commanded they be removed from the great hall all those years ago. He thought they had been smashed up to pieces and discarded into Blackwater Bay, such was Robert’s love for the Targaryen dynasty.

Arya set her torch in a sconce on the wall.

“There,” she said, pointing to the largest one. He went to it, and as he came closer he saw.

Her body lay tucked within the jaw of the dragon’s skull. Cradled between its great fangs, she looked small, girlish almost, with her golden hair falling in its close crop about her temples and her hands folded delicately against the black bodice of her gown as though she were sleeping. Her stomach was flat, so that, too, had been a ruse to bind him. Or she had lost the child, long ago. A sudden cord of grief whipped through him. 

Someone had taken the trouble to shut her eyes. 

“She wouldn’t be found here,” explained Arya, shrugging her shoulders. “Not for a little while at least. The dragon queen will be missing her, though, so if you need to grieve, best grieve quickly. In an hour’s time I’ll tell Daenerys’ men she ran here during the riots to die alone. They’ll come for the body.”

She started to go, but he stopped her.

“How did you…”

“Poison.” She turned, the wolfish look in her eye softening. “There wasn’t any pain. Not for her, anyway.”

Jaime felt his brow twitch up in question.

“Her monster was bloody hard to kill. He was like the others, only dragonglass could take him.”

He noticed then in the torchlight that her chin was split deeply in a gash, and the dark shadow of a bruise spread over her neck and dipped away into the folds of Qyburn’s gown. She had told him she was quick with a staff and had long trained with her little blade called Needle. Jaime had seen the Mountain bested before by Oberyn. They had a similar spirit, he thought, she and Oberyn.

“I expect Clegane will be happy to hear his dear brother’s dead,” said Jaime.

Arya smiled. She lifted a torch from the wall. “I expect so.” 

“Wait,” he said. He felt his heart pounding in his ears as she lingered, the flames licking up from her hand. “Why spare her the pain? She and Joffrey let your father die. My family has tortured yours. She succeeded in blowing up half of King’s Landing. You didn’t want worse vengeance?”

She paused, considering that. But then she said, “I didn’t.”

“Why?” 

“Would it have brought any of them back?” said Arya, not ungently. “Would it have honored your wish?” When he did not answer, she said, “You sent me to her, knowing what would happen, and you trusted me with her death. That was favor enough.”

He found his voice. “And after? The…riots?”

“Well,” she said, a smile creeping back into her voice, “I might have had a thing to do with that.”

He had to wonder what Catelyn Stark would have thought to see her youngest daughter now, an assassin and political agitator. _Peculiar woman_ , thought Jaime. He liked her. He nodded then, unable to find the words for thanks, and she went.

When she was gone Jaime knelt down on the silty floor and waited for the tears to come again, but he found he could not weep. Instead he thought of the last time he saw her. _No one walks away from me_ , she said. But he had. In the end, he had. Jaime reached past the dragon’s tooth and brushed his fingertips over her pale cheek. It was cold; she was already far away.

“Goodbye, Cersei,” he said.

He stood, and sighing he took the second torch from the wall. Then he turned and went back the way they had come, and behind him Cersei and the dragon vault fell away to darkness.

It was a long climb to return from what had felt like the lowest bowels of the the earth, and when he surfaced, he found himself in the wing that held the great hall. Footfall crashed around him and voices carried in from the hall, and Jaime tensed, listening. Perhaps the dead had been sighted, and battle was already upon them. But it was only handservants calling for tables to be brought in and kitchen women talking as they carried salted meat up from the stores, and Jaime hung the torch in an empty sconce.

In the hours since they arrived to King’s Landing, ships from Dragonstone began to fill the harbor, with rowers ferrying over those who had come to fight. And more would come from each direction it seemed until the city could house no more, and armies of nearly every kingdom would wait outside the walls that ringed wide to the forests and sea. 

 _Addam Marbrand will come, and Crakehall’s men._ The thought of seeing Addam again warmed him some, and he was composing a jape to welcome him with when a man moved in front of his path. Jaime looked up into Bronn’s rangy, cragged face. 

“Didn’t think I’d be blessed to see your bastard arse again, but here you are.” 

“Ser Bronn,” laughed Jaime with surprise.

That night their growing court of soldiers, lords, and refugees ate in the hall from long tables with many candles set upon them. Cersei had let the stores run low after the assault on the Golden Road, and all trading with the lesser lords of the Reach stopped after her destruction of the sept, which made for a lean meal, but none of them complained. Looking about himself, Jaime could almost dare to hope. His brother had escaped Daenerys’ side awhile to sit with him and Bronn, and he seemed to share in Jaime’s fragile optimism, chuckling into his chalice while Bronn leered appreciatively across at a northern woman dressed in breeches and a close-fitting tunic that was edged with fur. Brienne had sat with Arya and Sandor, a pointed decision, he felt, to maintain distance from him. Jaime watched as Sandor leaned over and dropped a remark into her ear that landed a caustic grin from Arya and made Brienne turn red in the face. Jaime’s stomach flipped. He took a long drink from his wine.

“And how have you fared of late, my friend,” Tyrion was asking.

The sellsword knight rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I’m just glad to be on the side with dragons, for a change.” 

“And we are glad to have you.” 

“If you’re so glad to have me, I might remind you that you last promised me two castles.”

His brother lifted his glass. “Ah, Bronn. I’m happy to know your ambitions have not changed, not even when death gallops down our throats.” 

“I’ll climb on a ship to Essos in the morrow if you Lannister fuckers don’t intend keep your word this time. Not before I kill you both first, though.” Bronn drove a dagger abruptly into the table; it sunk into the wood with a heavy thud. Tyrion lifted his eyebrows. 

“Is that meant to be a threat?” A baffled smile broke over Jaime’s lips.

“One Lannister dead and an army of ice fuckers on their way to kill the rest of us. I doubt you’d be missed. If I’m going to survive this war, I’m going to come out of it a lord, like it or no.”

“Have the Freys’ holdings then. I’ve heard they’re very lacking of lords just now,” said Tyrion. He wagged his chalice in a toast. “There, it’s settled. Two. You’ll be Lord Bronn Blackwater of the Twins. I do hope you’ll choose something imaginative to replace the old Frey standard.”

Bronn pried his knife free from the table. 

“A dagger, perhaps, on a brown field,” Jaime teased. “Very fearsome.”

Bronn took a swig from his wine, draining it, before reaching for the jug and pouring himself more. “I’ll kill you now if you like,” he mumbled into his wine, but a smile curved over his mouth as he drank.

Jaime drank as well, and just as he did the lilting notes of a harp drifted above the chatter in the hall. He looked toward the dais where Snow and Daenerys sat at a table with Sansa and their court of advisors, the lone iron throne rising up unoccupied behind them. To the side of their table a small band of musicians had taken up the floor and began to play. They were without a singer and the young boy at the fiddle played badly, but soon the hall was held rapt listening, and Snow stood, offering his hand to Daenerys. The room watched as the ice-haired woman smiled and placed her hand in his and let herself be led to the floor, and they began to dance.

“You’ve made a nice couple, brother,” he observed.   

Tyrion grinned. 

“One of my better ideas.”

“Can you really take credit for two people wanting to fuck each other?” said Bronn.

“Oh, not reasonably, no. But their betrothal was my design at least. Well, mine and Lady Sansa’s.” 

Jaime watched as other couples led one another onto the floor to join in the music. Tyrion’s stare shifted onto him, which Jaime made an effort to ignore.

“If you have _any_ hope at all of wooing her, you ought to approach Lady Brienne,” he said in a low voice that Jaime recognized as a feint of indifference. His brother had made use of that tone a thousand times in their youth when attempting to persuade him to do any number of things. Tyrion shrugged to add another affect of carelessness, but Jaime wasn’t fooled. He knew his brother well. 

“You may not have another chance in this lifetime,” Tyrion said, more seriously now. “I mean it, truly.”

As he spoke, Tormund Giantsbane moved from his place with a mixed party of northerners and wildlings at the far end of the hall, making his way across to where Brienne sat between Arya and Sandor.

Jaime fixed Tyrion with what he hoped was a withering look. Then he pushed back his chair.

He reached her while Tormund was still several tables away, and from the corner of his eye he watched as the ginger warrior halted mid-step. _Oh no you don’t._ Jaime extended his good hand to Brienne.

“If you would,” he said quietly. She gazed up at him, her mouth seized into a tight and perilous line.

“Come, when was the last time we danced?” he prodded when she did not move. “I was weakened by months of captivity and hampered by chains, true, but I do believe you bested me. Surely I'm no threat.”

Behind her eyes he saw her remember their fight by the river. A flush rose again to her cheeks. “I’m not dressed.”

She wore a simple pair of breeches and a long skirted tunic laced along the front with sleeves of a matching grey wool. It was this she referred to, her eyes flashing to Daenerys and Sansa and the other ladies now turning the floor in their modest wartime finery, but a hundred teasing remarks occurred to him, each of them more lurid than the next and none of them worthy. A trickle of heat curled up his spine.

He said nothing instead, his palm held stubbornly to her. By now several lookers-on watched them. Seeing he would not be deterred, Brienne sighed, and at last she fitted her hand to his, rising from her chair.

As they found their place on the floor, he worried briefly that she would flinch from the touch of his stump; when he had risen that day he had gone without the golden hand, wanting nakedness rather than to have to feel Cersei’s weight on his wrist. But he was satisfied to feel Brienne’s hand curl behind his neck, and gently he pressed his right forearm to her back.

She danced well, though he ought not to have been surprised. She was quick in a sword yard, if not light of feet then sure of step. The music sped, and he pushed with his palm to send them apart then pulled her back again. The red had not gone from her cheeks but spread instead to her neck and ears, and Jaime loved the sight of her, loved that as they spun her hair fell down to her jaw and loved that when he pressed her close the corners of her mouth twitched up in a smile.

“You make a good partner,” he said into her ear. He was rewarded by a light huff from her. 

He turned them further away from the other couples. 

“Are you all right?” she said quietly. 

 _She means Cersei._

“I am.” 

Her blue eyes searched his, doubting. “Jaime…” 

The song came to a close, and at the center of the hall the couples stepped away from one another and dipped into their curtseys and bows. Applause rang distantly in his ears.

Her hand dropped away from his neck. He did not move. 

“Brienne,” he said. He ran his thumb over the back of her palm. His throat felt tight, his heart pounded. “I’ll not have you leave this hall without knowing that I love you.”

 

 


	31. Brienne XVII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Was out of town for a bit, and this chapter took a bit to realize.

While they danced, her cheeks had gone hot, her heart thrumming with all the excitable flurry of the wings of a bird. _He is painfully handsome_ , she thought as their palms pressed and he spun her, _handsome, and as radiant as sunlight_. She was a mote of dust drifting in that warmth, a fuzzed and floating thing. But with his words a cold wave crashed over her, and her thoughts stopped dead. She broke from his touch, her hand leaping away as though he burned her.

All around them the room chattered with life, the players taking up their instruments for a second song and more couples spilling onto the floor to dance. Jaime had led them into a shaded alcove apart from the center of the hall, and light from the brazier cast half his face in a fiery glow. His eyes searched hers. She had not misheard, she knew. 

She gave no reply, and he moved toward her, prompting her to stumble back a step. Her shoulders brushed against a column. The light moved off his face.

“Will you not answer? Brienne, say something. Please.”

She winced. It was all too close to words she had heard from him before. _Come, curse me or kiss me or call me a liar_ , he once said. And she wanted to, wanted to curse him and kiss him and call him a liar. But all she said was, “Thank you, Ser Jaime, for the dance,” and then she was walking away from him, her feet carrying her out of the room as though she had no particular force over them but they a will of their own. 

All her body seemed to scream for escape, for silence, for cold, for relief from his soft and wounded stare. And soon she had it; she found an open door that arched outward into the night, and she fled into its quiet, the garden’s hush and the touch of soft snowfall ramming into her like an embrace. Brienne clutched her own arms about herself tightly, sighing, rocking on her heels.

_I’ll not have you leave this hall without knowing that I love you._

She shook her head, and as she did snow cascaded with laughable lightness from her shoulders and hair. How could he love her, how could he at any moment have loved her, when it was so impossible? The little question vexed her for minutes and perhaps hours, and still her mind was slow and chilled as ice floes gliding on a river, and the night stretched on in all directions, and no one came to break it. 

It was a long time later that she found she was shivering with cold, and her jaw was sore from how she’d seized it, thinking. The revelry indoors had died down, and quietly she stole inside, winding her way through the emptied corridors in search of—what?—she barely knew. Her hands felt along the stones, along the doors. In some moments she chuckled to herself in the darkness, and in others she thought she might cry, or bite down on her tongue until it satisfied her with the taste of blood. At last though she discovered the place Sansa stayed, and finding Sandor at the door she turned him away with a nod of her chin. 

“Go on, then. I’ll take watch.”

The gruff man regarded her from under his heavy brow, but he assented with a roll of his shoulders and went inside to her bed.

Brienne leaned against her post, Oathkeeper’s extravagant coiled hilt propped beneath her palm. A lion’s head. She once thought it peculiar he had given her a sword styled in such a manner, though she supposed it marked her as a bearer of his favor, which in his mind perhaps was all the better to aid her in the search for the Stark girls. Of course it was this same mark that set Sandor off against her in the heights of the Vale. The Lannister name betrayed her as much as eased her passage… Still, she carried the sword with pride for it was a magnificent blade, not so distant in her mind from the Just Maid, the enchanted sword Ser Galladon of Morne had borne in Septa Roelle’s stories, given to the legendary knight of Tarth by the Maiden herself—though that was just a tale for children. It was a piece of Jaime in a way, this lion’s sword. It was the oath they together bore. But most of all it was his gift. His gift that warmed her, that made her thoughts turn now, turn and turn in circles. And as her thoughts churned, the torches burned low, and the last hours of the night went on. She did not sleep.

When morning broke and the first light came, she heard the little pat of footsteps down the way. It was Sansa’s serving girl with the copper hair, come with a fresh pot of water for her to wash her face with. Sandor had not remerged yet from Sansa’s room, she realized with a start. _The girl cannot see Sansa with him._  

“Wait there,” she said, stopping the girl when she was still a few paces away. “Lady Sansa is feeling indisposed this morning.”

Brienne cleared her throat and rapped lightly at the door. “Your maid comes. Are you well?”

There was the sound of cloth rustling and feet falling onto the ground.  
  
“Yes, send her in,” came Sansa’s voice a moment later. Brienne cracked open the door, nodding to the young girl.

“All right,” she said to her, and the girl went in, carrying her pretty porcelain jug with pride.

Sandor had used the stolen time to dress himself, Brienne was relieved to see, but he stood awkwardly at the other end of the room, his face spotted with red. Sansa alone was unbothered, slipping into the silver dressing gown the girl offered to her and walking coolly to the jug and bowl to splash a little water on her cheeks and underarms.

“Thank you Betany. I’ll dress myself.” 

The girl dropped into a curtsey and left. Sansa’s eyes slid to where Brienne lingered by the door.

“I’ll ehm. Get something from the kitchens for you,” Sandor announced to the abruptly quiet room, and before anyone could protest he stalked past her and went out the door, leaving the both of them alone together.

When he was well enough away, Sansa said, “What is it, Brienne? Your objection is loud enough from the worry in your face.” She seated herself by the window. Outside a heavy snow was falling, cloaking the red roofs of the city in a growing blanket of white.

Brienne tried to let the tension go slack in her jaw and brow before taking a tentative step closer to her lady.

“It’s just that—is it him you want? Gods willing, you will survive us and return north to retake your home, but if he should live as well…”

“We have to hope for victory,” Sansa cut in. Her voice was not hard, but her mouth held in a firm line that betrayed her somewhat. “If we don’t hope, we might as well already be dead.” 

Brienne thought of the night of the battle at Winterfell, of the dark wave of the dead crashing into their armies, knocking into the ancient walls. So quickly they had overtaken it. It was all she could do not to shudder at the memory; Brienne’s neck twitched as she suppressed its horror. But Sansa was right, in her way. Fear would make for a fast death. They could not go into this war without the will to win and to live. Sansa’s argument for hope aside, Brienne still suspected that she denied herself the future she could very well have. She plainly returned Sandor’s affections, though was he the right match for her?

“There will be other suitors, after,” Brienne said with care. “Many men from high houses will want your hand in marriage. Dorne, maybe, or the Reach.”

Her lips moved in a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. “I’ll not marry again as a pawn.” 

“Forgive me. That wasn’t my meaning.”

Sansa sighed. “Not yours, maybe, but no doubt it will cross someone’s mind. Tyrion has already made his suggestions. Maybe Daenerys will have her own ideas. Or Jon’s advisor, Ser Davos. I know neither well enough to guess.” 

“Tyrion has recommended a marriage?” Brienne’s eyebrows lifted.

This time Sansa’s eyes did crease as she smiled. “Oh, he put himself forward, of course, before suggesting some of the others. In another lifetime I might have considered him. After all, ours could have become a friendly marriage. Shame Joffrey’s death interrupted it.”

A dark joke, but Brienne smiled, too. 

More seriously, Sansa said, “I mean to keep my place in the north. And I’d like, this time, to marry for love. I’ve little patience left for the world that raised us only to strike us down or tie us to posts we could never grow to love…” She ran her hands over the skirt of her dressing gown, thinking, before she met Brienne’s eyes again. “I heard Daenerys say something to Tyrion, once, on Dragonstone. She says she wants to break the wheel. And whatever her meaning perhaps she is right. If we are bound to face death for the sake of a dream to live, we had better choose a life we want.”

The women regarded one another in appreciative quiet. Sansa steepled her fingers in her lap. As the moment stretched on, though, something shifted in Sansa’s eyes. _Cunning. I know that look._ Inwardly Brienne braced herself for what she thought might come.

“I saw you dancing with Ser Jaime this past evening,” she said. “Have you thought any more on my proposal? What _you_ might want? Be honest with me now, surely we’re friends enough.” 

It was Brienne’s turn to blush, seeking refuge in the window above Sansa’s shoulder where outside the white winds blew across the city.

Sansa had spoken wisely, before. Yet if she searched herself Brienne couldn’t say for sure what more she did want from the world. To see her father, to go to Tarth, to sail a quick little sloop once more on its waters—she wanted that. But the other things she wanted, the half-formed wishes which tempted her in the night, were mere shadows, things she did not permit herself to see. _Because they are impossible. Because I know I cannot have them._ Most resolved of them was the wish she could bury Pod, but how could she when he was anywhere and nowhere? And from there, the wishes descended blackly: to become a knight, or darker still, to be mother to a family that could fill the empty halls of her childhood, and to not be ridiculous in the cast of a woman. And still blackest, furthest, stolen deeper down within her like a choked flame: to have Jaime’s love. What was the point of admitting such things? To look at them was only pain. 

 _But he has said he loves you_ , Brienne’s thoughts intruded then. _Can that really be a lie? And if not a lie, then what?_ She reasoned that his admission could be a delusion borne of grief and the stress of the times, perhaps. It would not be so unlikely. She supposed the only thing to do would be to learn the truth, though the prospect of that scalded her, made her want to turn away.

Sansa was waiting still for an answer. Brienne looked into her eyes. “Tarth,” she said, because that wish was all she could bear to admit at present. “I’d want to return to Tarth.”

Though easier than the rest to say, it had its own gravity. It meant she would have to be released from her vow. It meant she would have to find some other purpose.

Sansa seemed to understand. “I will miss you if you go,” she said, softly. “But I should like to visit you one day on your isle.”

Brienne nodded. She imagined Sansa’s hair whipping about in the warm sea air, and the delight she might find in the colorful flowers that erupted in the meadows after a rain. “I would like that, too."

Sandor returned then, and when he came she excused herself, bowing.

In the following days, work was well underway to fortify the city and keep. Great vats to hold burning oil were mounted to the walls, and outside the gates Lannister men raised five trebuchets for every half mile. While walking the walls with Sansa, Brienne had seen a trail of wagons full of spikes fitted with dragonglass shards with men and boys striding alongside them. “They’re to be taken to the hills and buried in the soil, to slow the run of the dead,” Sansa explained. Everywhere she looked there was activity; one could not walk through the streets of King’s Landing without hearing the crash of hammers at their anvils or the call of soldiers as they directed the streams of refugees where to seek shelter or bread. _I have seen battle_ , Brienne thought to herself. _But now I will see war._  

As the city filled, so did the Red Keep. Each day brought more factions of lords, ladies, and their houses hailing from nearly every corner of the kingdoms. There were the northern lords who came from the camps at Maidenpool and Dragonstone, and young Robin Arryn and the lesser lords of the Vale arrived by sea after Sansa’s persuading to seek refuge and join them lest they otherwise be overrun even in their mountains. Then came a few lords and ladies of the Reach, though they were fewer; some Florents, a small party of the Ashfords, and the eldest son of Lord Mathis Rowan arrived and made solemn vows before Jon Snow and Daenerys. Sansa’s uncle by her mother came with his wife and child in tow, and with him the new Lord Tully brought a strong faction of riverlords and their bannermen. Hedge knights of every obscure banner soon filled the great hall as well with chatter of the hope to make a name for themselves or else die in glory. And finally there came the western houses, Moreland and Myatt, Yarwyck and Brax, Broom and Foote and a dozen others. Brienne saw the sigils of the house Marbrand of Ashemark and Crakehall flying among them, and she happened to watch from afar as Jaime ran down to meet them in the yard, clapping his arm heartily around two of the men and tossing back his head in laughter. It was not often she had seen him among friends. The sight cheered her. By some ill luck he seemed to sense her watching, and his gaze dislodged from his friends to land on where she lingered at the wall. He smiled at her uncertainly, and she made haste to turn and go on with her patrol.

She had been avoiding both Jaime and his brother for close to a week when Tyrion cornered her in the keep’s east wing. 

“Lord Tyrion,” she said in greeting. 

“Lady Brienne.” He gave a short bow of his head, though when she moved to walk past him, he stepped into her path.

“I apologize for the brusqueness of our meeting, but I had gotten the feeling you were taking certain pains to keep away from me and would not see me otherwise. I was told I might find you walking this way.”

Brienne found she did not have a reply for that. Her silence seemed to encourage him.

“If you would…?” He gestured forward with an outstretched arm.

She nodded awkwardly, and they began to walk together. They’d gone a ways without speaking when he said, “I hope you’ll forgive me for this intrusion, but my brother, I believe, has shared certain feelings with you some time past.”

She looked down at him, saying nothing still.

“Yes, I thought as much,” he said. Their footsteps echoed loudly as they walked. He seemed to chew his words, thinking. “And do you not…return these feelings? Is he misplaced in his affection for you?”

Brienne stopped.

“Is it true, then?”

Tyrion looked up into her face, searching her. His own face folded into a frown. “True?” he said.

She shook her head, unable to repeat herself. _If he has somehow come to love me…_ Brienne’s hand felt numbly for Oathkeeper’s hilt at her hip.

“Excuse me, my lord,” she said, and as blood drummed in her ears she left him, her long legs carrying her fast and far away.

The sky had grown dark by the time she found herself standing outside the door to the White Tower. Some men spilled out of its entrance, talking. None took much notice of her; they were on their way to the garrison hall where the knights and soldiers had taken to eating their evening meals. She waited for their footsteps to fall away to silence, though in her ears her blood still beat in feverish, pounding waves. Then she made herself start forward, and with legs full of sand she climbed the stairs of the tower until she stood at the highest room where an open door led through to the quarters of the Lord Commander.

Jaime turned, hearing her come, though it must not have been her he was expecting. The easy smile that greeted her fell away to something much more difficult to read. Confusion, maybe. Fear. Seeing him, whatever bravery of her own that had brought her there left her at once. She felt the color drain from her face, her mouth turned dry.

“I’m sorry,” she said dumbly. “I…They told me you’d taken up your old quarters here.”

“Yes, well.” Jaime glanced about himself before fixing her again with his stare. “Habit.” 

Brienne shook herself. “I came because I thought we might talk.”

He waited. It was a clear night, moonlight caught his hair.

“I have been hostile to you. I…haven’t understood. What you told me,” she said. 

“Haven’t…understood?” he repeated, as though struggling to understand her himself. He took a hesitant step toward her, and as he did her breath caught in her throat.

“Gods,” she swore. Tyrion’s frown appeared in her thoughts. _True?_ he’d said, and now she flipped over the word, a wave worrying a stone. _True?_

Jaime brought himself to her with another step. He put a trembling hand to her cheek, and she shuddered, shutting her eyes so she would not have to see the tender look in his eye. “Brienne,” he said, softly, and then his lips were brushing hers, questioning and gentle. Lightly, she answered him, and his arm looped around her lower back, steadying them, pressing them closer, and then they both were lost, kissing one another fervently, hungrily, a kiss borne out of sorrow and starvation and heat. Jaime steered them back toward his bed, and they fell onto it roughly, a tangle of muscle and limbs and too much clothing. His hand pushed at her tunic, seeking skin, and she rolled her hips inelegantly, impatiently.

Her eyes were full of tears when he lifted his mouth away, panting. His hand and arm were on either side of her head, a bare inch between them.

“What’s…” he trailed, seeing her tears. A flame of embarrassment and frustration lashed through her, and she wiped them away, but only more came in their place, running hotly down her cheeks and into her ears.

“I’m—” she said, but he stopped her, bending down to seize her lips in another kiss, though this one was drowsy, slow. He moved to her cheeks, kissing the salt from them, kissing the corners of her eyes. His good hand fluttered over her face, and lightly he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you. I don’t want to live in a world anymore where you don’t know that. I don’t want to face that…those things again without you knowing it. I don’t care if you can’t return my feelings, not the way I want, I only need you to know, now, before it’s wasted.”

She looked up at him, her breath stilled and sluggish. Happiness was an edge, a razor, a high limb. She clung to its peak, already plummeting.

“You love me,” she repeated. 

“ _Yes_ ,” he said. His own breath was haggard as they stared into one another’s eyes, both seeming to wait to catch flame and burn. Brienne touched a hand to the back of his neck, fanning her fingers through the short crop of hair there before she pressed gently down, and she kissed him, the questions gone, the salt of her tears passed back onto her tongue.

He turned her, his hand seeking her more forcefully now, pushing and tugging, until she lifted the tunic and chemise above her head and wrenched him free of his, too. He sat up and briefly wrapped his arms around her, breathing in deeply, and their skin was wondrous and soft and never more perfect as when they touched. Then he pressed his legs tightly around her and turned her once more so she was on her back, and before she could protest he was shimmying her breeches down past her pale, wide hips and burying his head between her thighs, sighing, grunting, dropping exasperated kisses on her skin. She arched her neck back and moaned fretfully as his mouth danced lower, and as his fingers swept up to touch her there, she breathed out a strangled sigh of her own. His eyes darted up to her, blinking through dark lashes, and when her pleasure seemed to affirm him, he shut them peacefully and lowered his mouth to her, his tongue moving over her gently, insisting, wondering, loving.

Later, after they had kissed and fucked and come, the air brought a chill in from the northern window of the tower, and he clambered up the length of her sweating body to lie beside her. She folded herself beneath his arm. The both of them breathed heavily, their ardor spent.

He seemed to drift awhile beside her, lost somewhere between consciousness and dream, but Brienne lay awake. The cold, deep blue of the room in shadow was her own ocean.

“Jaime,” she said, soft enough for him to hear, or not hear.

But his eyes opened a slit.

“I love you.” 

Jaime opened his eyes a little wider. He swept his right arm over her back, stroking her naked skin. She shivered.

“Do you?” he said, low as a whisper.

Brienne thought she might laugh. A smile stretched across her face, and one touched his lips as well.

He brought his face to hers.

 


	32. Brienne XVIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. It's been an enormous pleasure.  
> The last chapters to follow will be epilogues of sorts.  
> I hope you enjoy these final few installments. <3 all my love. tru

It was not night when the three horns blew. In the stories, after, it would be said that the sky was dark and no moon or star was shining, and that the lonely, echoing sound of the horns had stilled a baby’s cry and stole the breath of the hardest warrior.

In truth it was midmorning, and the day had gone on ordinarily to that point. Children cried and bread was broken and soldiers squatted over the latrine. Outriders brought the news far earlier, and so when they came there was not surprise, but there was chatter, and dread, and the eventual vast, coordinated movement of the army of those who lived to find their places on the walls or beyond them, on a ship at harbor to loose away to Essos should the capital fall, or remaining within the keep to give council. They had waited for the battle, and at last it came.

Brienne was making her way to the stables with Jaime following close at her heels. They walked with the silent resolve of soldiers who went to meet their war, but between steps the image of the dead overran her thoughts; she heard their skittering and smelled their stench, she saw their mass of mangled bodies, she felt the soulless blue of their eyes. A chill wracked through her. _I will face them. We all must._

At the thought, she could almost feel Podrick walking beside her, and so keenly did she sense him there that she could almost turn and see him, his head tucked low, his eyes darting up to meet hers as he found himself under her regard. The boy would have given her that lopsided smile she knew. _My lady_ , she could hear him say in his good-natured way. He would have followed her anywhere, into any battle. He had.

But Podrick was not there, and when she glanced over her shoulder Jaime met her regard instead. She nodded to him.

When they arrived to the stables to ready their mounts, Beric was already there stroking the face of a black mare.

“Ready, old man?” said Jaime, though Brienne heard more sincerity than mocking in his voice.

Beric chuckled drily. He gave the mare a finale pat on the neck, then walked astride her and pulled himself up into the saddle.

“Suppose I’m ready as I’ll be in all my life.”

Tormund came from the opposite direction, and he flashed them a faded smile through his ginger beard. “My brothers and sisters,” he said in greeting, his glance moving over them all. Arya had since come in quietly and unnoticed, but she paused in bridling her mount while Tormund spoke. “Let’s go and end this.”

Arya’s hands resumed working, the bridle falling into place over the horse’s silver ears. Brienne watched as she gave a slight nod of assent.

At the last war council it was decided the five of them would be relieved of command or any other task. By the urging of the prophecy of the Three-Eyed Raven, their sole charge was instead to ride out in search of the remaining White Walkers and defeat them, and to support Jon in drawing out the Night King to confront him in single combat.

Meera Reed had been present at that meeting, though curiously when Snow dictated the plan to lure out the Night King, she did not speak of Bran’s dream, the last dream, the dream she’d told Brienne in confidence. When Meera said nothing and conversation moved elsewhere, Brienne stared across at her, trying in vain to understand her silence. But the council went on and still Meera said nothing. There had been a delicate air of hope in the great room, hope that they would prevail, that without the wight dragon they now stood a chance, and that with their combined forces they could at last defend against the army of the dead—at least long enough to fell their leaders and with them end the war entirely. At the council’s close, all of Westeros’ lords, ladies, advisors, and commanders left the hall chattering faintly to one another. But Brienne’s thoughts were fixed still to Meera and why she had not spoken, and she trailed after her.

“Why haven’t you told them what you’ve seen?” 

Meera had asked for the task of supporting a small command in the highest of the hills surrounding King’s Landing. She would lead a party of crannogmen, wildlings, and northerners who were skilled in archery to hide among the trees and hills at the edge of the fighting. If from their vantage they could see the battle was lost, they were under orders to escape back to the city to warn the others to safety and to protect the last of the retreat. Their first task, though, was to aid the others in drawing out the king.

Meera turned to face her.

“My father warned Jojen, once, about the green dreams.” The young woman’s brown eyes were soft and distant as she spoke. “He didn’t know much about them, but it’s still said among my people that it’s unwise to speak of the future. I thought their meaning was only that the gift would not be believed—it can be dangerous to not be believed. Even in the north they fear the skinchangers and the greenseers, and have hung them from the trees.” Meera shook her head lightly. “I see now what perhaps Bran knew, at the end. The future is a fragile thing. To speak it aloud cannot prevent that it will happen. Nor can it assure that it will happen.”

The last several nights while Jaime slept peacefully beside her in the heights of the White Tower, Brienne had lain awake thinking of that soft and distant look in Meera’s eyes. _Should I tell him?_ she wondered to herself. _If I do, will he put himself in harm’s way?_

Most of all, though, she feared. An icy, discomfortable fear that coursed all throughout her, that cut through her veins like a streaming river, always there, running… Whenever she turned her thoughts to it, its chill was worse than the coldest night she’d known in the north, the night they had fled to the godswood within the walls of castle Hornwood. Before she told him she loved him, she had scarcely looked at it. _If I die_ , she had thought, then, _I only die._ Now though she clung to the little warmth of their love, and she did not want to let her hands drop away from where she clutched it. 

Brienne shook herself, cinching the girdle belt tight and tossing the reins around the saddle’s neck. Tormund, Arya, and Beric had all mounted. Their horses swayed beyond the stable doors. They waited. 

But Jaime had come behind her, his arms searching around her armored waist. She turned into his embrace.

“Marry me, when this is all over, Brienne,” he was saying into her hair.

The words as they fell in their quick succession made her shudder. _Should I tell him?_ she thought again, but she knew she would not, because at that moment, in his arms, she felt more certain than ever that perhaps she would not live. A great sadness yawned within her.

Instead she brought her fingers to his cheek and touched him lightly there, feeling the softness of his skin and the rough bristle of his whiskers at her palm.

“Yes,” she said, so quietly, “yes Jaime, all right.”

He kissed her then, a hard and long kiss, and when they broke from their embrace his gaze lingered over her as they pulled themselves into their saddles. To be out from under his stare, she kicked her horse to spur her forward, and they rode with the others through the city and through the gates and into the lines of men.

Addam Marbrand was at their head, reining his roan destrier in tight pacing before the western armies that held the fore. “Keep to your positions,” he was shouting. “Keep to your commanders.” 

As their five settled into the rear of the central forces, Jon and Daenerys leapt into the sky above them aback Rhaegal and Drogon. From the edges of her vision she could see the thousands of women and men peer up at the black shadows as they moved out of sight; from behind her she heard a man suck in his breath.

Almost in the same instant the storm slammed into them, a dizzying whirl of white wind that stole her own breath. She braced her legs tightly around her mare.

“Light!” a voice screamed, and along the winding miles of the outer walls a great chain of trebuchet baskets burst to flame.

Jaime’s horse complained breathily beside her, its hooves shifting in the snow.

The wave of the clattering, clanging run of the dead echoed nearer past the trees. 

Brienne’s eyes flicked to the east, where the first mass of grey began to tumble out of the white. Her stomach flipped. _Do not be afraid._

“Loose!” 

They broke from the treeline before her. An arc of fiery pitch soared above their armies, smashing into the dead. Flaming arrows poured down by the thousands, sinking even more. All around her men and women braced their swords while the weapons commanders reset the slings and the archers dipped their arrows again into the braziers.

“Light! Loose!” rang out once more, and as the dead collided into the front of their lines fire blazed down from the sky like a million angry stars.

The clash of metal rose horribly above the sounds of the winds hurling, and Brienne looked to Jaime and the others where they paced their horses at the back of the lines before glancing back to the battle. Blue eyes shone out of the blizzard, but no Walkers were among them.

With mounting dread she understood. _They’re holding back, hiding somewhere. They know what we plan to do._

Not half a mile off, a giant bashed its arms into the trees, felling them as it burst forward for the front. _Giants?_ Brienne thought with a start. She looked on through the lashing snow with horror as it flung men from the ground. Cries rang in her ears, strangled, horrid cries of the dying. But then dragonfire blasted down upon the giant, taking with it in its torrent a long wave of the dead. Brienne squinted through the snow and winds and saw the faint white shape of Daenerys Targaryen at the dragon’s back. Jon Snow would be scouting elsewhere, searching deep into the hills.

Brienne swore. They needed some way to break past the battle and get into the trees where the White Walkers no doubt waited. The way forward was impassable though; the dead ringed the city from all sides but the sea. 

Her heart pounded while she thought, and before her Daenerys razed the dead in punishing lines while the living screamed and leapt back from the heat, some hundreds falling to the gnashing, grasping pull of the wights’ hands or others to the tower of burning flames. In spite of their added forces of some 80,000 women and men, they were still greatly outnumbered. During their march south, the army of the dead had claimed thousands upon thousands. Brienne knew they would not be able to hold them off for much longer before the dead gained the little open ground they guarded. _If we fall back to the city walls, it will soon be over._

She pulled on her reins, backing her dappled grey mare and circling her tightly past the others.

“We can’t go on waiting here, they won’t come,” she yelled. “We have to find them, now.” 

“But if that’s what they want—” Tormund began in rough protest.

Jaime cut him off. “How,” he shouted. 

Arya and Beric watched her with open expressions. Brienne chewed her cheek, thinking. “The dragonfire. If they can make a path…”

Arya was already turning her horse back for the city gate. “I’ll get to the walls,” she shouted behind her. “I’ll signal Daenerys from there.”

The Stark woman rode off and was soon gone. Tormund looked to Brienne.

“The people at the front will need us,” he said. 

She nodded. Jaime sighed beside her.  
  
“To the front,” she called, “spread out, but don’t lose each other.”

They spurred their horses forward, carving their way through the battle to the front of the fray, blood and bone splitting out from their swords as they joined at a fast gallop. From the corner of her eye Brienne saw a common woman outfitted with no more than rags and a simple dragonglass sword stare up at her in fearful awe, and an instant later she fell to the plunging cut of a wight’s steel, her body landing mutely against another corpse among the din of war. Brienne screamed with anger, swinging Oathkeeper hard into their tangling grey mass before rounding her mare again to run the line, sweeping, killing. She’d kill them all, if she could. But her sword only reached so far, and there were always more, more returning wherever she cut them down, leaping for her, yearning for her. She fought them still. 

What may have been moments or ages after, someone yelled behind her, and another voice joined it, shouting, “The dragon!”

Brienne twitched her head back to look as Drogon crashed into the wall, its talons crumbling the dun-colored stones where its enormous body settled and stilled. 

She searched above the fray for Jaime, and as she did his eyes clapped onto her from a few yards on. They turned their horses and fell away a moment from the bloodiest of the fighting to watch Daenerys and Arya at the wall.

After her message was passed, Arya’s small figure slipped away, and Drogon shook into the sky and disappeared into the clouds. Brienne rubbed her gloved hand roughly over her face, wiping the blood and flakes of snow from her eyes.

Beric rode beside her, reining back his courser. She could barely him above the roar of the battle, but in his queer, quiet voice, he said, “Time to go.”

Just as he spoke, Drogon and Rhaegal both dropped out of the sky, burning a path of fire into the army of the dead. 

Brienne looked to Jaime.

She kicked her horse and leapt forward after the flames.

Everywhere the fire touched, there was the smell of singeing flesh. The heat was blinding, but she and the others followed in its path, for the open trail of ground closed fast behind them as the dead piled in from all sides. Soon they were riding through the forests into the growing shadows of the hills, where scorched trees fell all around them, and a grey tinge of ash floated in the blurring snow.

As they rode higher into the hills, the army of the dead thinned, and the dragonfire split into two paths. Jaime, Brienne, and Beric galloped left. Tormund and Arya veered right, and disappeared.

The three followed the blaze for several miles until its dragon breathed no more. Brienne glanced up, blinking through the sudden darkness. The barrel of the shining beast’s body rose away into the clouds.

She could hear her heartbeat now. And the crash of the mare’s hooves through snow. And in the distance, between the trees, the blur of blue eyes. 

They were being watched.

 _No_ , Brienne thought. _Hunted._

She opened her mouth to shout in warning, but as she did a whir of ice flew past her, grazing the air above her shoulder. The spear sailed into a tree, its tip piercing the wood with a ringing crack. Her horse reared in panic. 

Before she could protest, Jaime rode off after the Walker, her sword’s twin swinging out in his hand. Beric galloped after him, moving alongside him through the trees.

Brienne clucked hastily to her mare, trying to calm her, but the horse had gone skittish. She stumbled back, refusing Brienne’s hand at the reins. Brienne wheeled her in a tight circle, but by the time she broke her panic the woods had fallen again to silence, and she no longer sensed she was being watched. She was alone.

From somewhere above her there was a loud, low crash, like something falling into the tree line. She looked up. The canopy shivered secretively above her.

Brienne blinked the snow from her eyes. “Come on, girl,” she said beneath her breath, squeezing her legs, and she drove the mare slowly through the trees.

The climb was long and slow-going, and when they reached an outcropping of boulders, her mare began to slip, the footing too difficult in the snow. Brienne slipped down from her saddle and took Oathkeeper from its scabbard. She thought, for a moment, to lash the reins to a tree, but instead she took the mare’s great grey face in her hands and stroked the white tippled blaze on her brow. When the mare leaned into her touch, Brienne sighed and rested her face against the soft, warm bridge of the horse’s nose. She smelled like life. Life, and the stables of Brienne’s childhood, and her father’s embrace. She smelled like crisp mornings and a kettle of water set to warm, like sleepy-eyed Pod rising up to help her with camp. She smelled like the long echo of Jaime’s laughter, and his arms around her, holding.

Brienne hooked her fingers beneath the sweat-crusted leather of her bridle and lifted it over her ears. The horse shook out her mane, nickering softly. 

 _Go on and live, then._

Brienne turned up the hill and climbed.

In some places she sunk down to her hip, and she had to grasp through the cutting cold for purchase to pull herself higher. Her hands soon were numb, and her toes ached and throbbed through the wet of her boots. Still she climbed, and the tree line shrunk away to littler scrub pines and the bare, stark arms of mountain willow. The winds began to roar louder around her. She was nearing the summit. 

As she came to the peak of the mountain, she saw it. Rhaegal the green had fallen, his enormous body lying in a viciously writhing tangle of blood and scale, his tail lashing the trees, his great wings folding and unfolding. A hole had torn through the muscle of his right wing, a spear of ice embedded there in his breast like a thorn. But beneath the lashing of the dying dragon there was the sound of metal singing. Jon cried out.

Brienne swept her glance around the bare cliff face. There, on a bald bit of rock that leaned out high over the mountain’s edge, the northern king battled with the king of the dead.

Oathkeeper flowed out in her hand. She walked slowly toward them, her feet moving of their own accord, her thoughts empty of anything but the pulse of blood and the scrape of wind. 

The Night King struck with his greatsword of ice, and Jon stumbled to parry the assault, turning, twisting. He cried out again as he struck back, his voice lost to the wind. Jon’s footing was poor, he was failing.

Brienne drew closer. Their swords met and sprung apart again. The Night King’s back was to her. The snows swirled madly about them, the eye and origin of the gale. Below them, low at the foothills of King’s Landing, the war raged on in silent and desperate fury. It was as though they were the gods, and below them was the struggle of mankind. 

The Night King landed a hard blow against Jon’s steel, sending him sprawling backward. As he edged back on his elbows in the snow, she raised Oathkeeper in her hand. Jon’s eyes landed on her and widened with surprise.

The demon turned, slow as ice. Hate burned in his eyes.

Brienne brought her sword down. It stung against the sweeping cut of the Night King’s greatsword, singing a horrible song of hoarfrost breaking against steel. She pushed with all her weight against its edge to dance her blade away, and as she shifted he swung again and she met him. His power was agonizing; she wailed with effort as she broke away and countered again, again.

He hefted his greatsword high, and she screamed out as she moved away from his fast-falling blow, though not soon enough. It bit into her side as she turned, struggling to get her arm up. Her eyes flew up to meet his burning stare. The seven points of a star glared down at her, cold, colder than death itself. 

She was falling, falling, but not before swinging Oathkeeper one last time, and as she swung wildly its edge glanced past the greatsword into the Night King’s chest, sweeping into his hard flesh, opening him into a million shattering pieces of ice.

Brienne sunk down into the empty air, gasping. 

The storm dropped away to nothing but guileless blue sky. Below her, a low wind rushed along the sea.

A cry rose up. A cry of a hundred thousand voices.

Jon Snow moved over her, his hand pressing into her side where wet blood ran and pooled in her clothes. He was tearing off his cloak and pressing the cloth into her, murmuring something she couldn’t hear. 

Jaime’s voice rang out over the silence. He sang her name. 

Eons after, Brienne blinked open her eyes. Her body was painfully warm, ringing with it as though in fever. A room glowed bright and cozily around her, and at the foot of a bed there was the pleasant crackle of fire. Someone had brought her into a dream. Or she was already dead, and this was some memory.

She looked down to where Jaime’s hand clutched her fingers. Tears prickled in her eyes. Everything blurred as he raised his face and saw her.

_No, no, I am alive._

Her life was there before her.

 

 


	33. Jaime XVI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to pastequefolle who helped me decide some of the details of this first bit of the epilogue!

His hand was slow at her fastens. _Though for a crippled man I move quick enough_ , thought Jaime with an inward smile. He tightened the last bit she could not reach, going up on his toes to pull it into place.

“There you are,” he said, sinking back on his heels. 

She turned. Her face was flushed. 

 _You’ve slain the king of death itself,_ Jaime wanted to laugh. _Can you really be so frightened of a few thousand people come to adore you?_ Though if he wanted to laugh it was only out of fondness for her. He knew no one else quite so marvelous. Jaime thought of something he’d heard Loras say once in his grief for Renly, and remembering his words he recognized the truth of it. She was the brightest star in the sky; she shone like a minor sun. It was fitting, then, that in the few days since the war had ended the people had taken to calling her Brienne the Evenstar, although her father who formally held the ancient title had not yet passed. Who could dissuade them? The world wanted heroes. If it was going to accept him, a man once made to be its villain, it at least deserved a hero as true as her. 

“All right,” she said through a clenched jaw, weathering his grin, “be still.”

She helped him with the last of his armor as well, an intimacy they had shared a few times now. Her hands hesitated at his shoulders as she fastened the cloak of deep crimson and gold. The armor he had chosen was plain by contrast, the same set he was fitted with before the battle at Winterfell. He he had lost his care for the frills and fuss of fanciful pauldrons and the lion’s sigil that had once dressed his armor. Perhaps if he were honest with himself he might admit he was not overeager to reclaim the imagery in a city where so much devastation had come at his family’s own hands. But Brienne’s hands brushed the cloth at his shoulders, straightening the folds as they fell, and he looked up into her eyes and found her staring. _Imagining this about your shoulders?_  

As though she could hear his thoughts, she turned a deeper shade of red. His grin widened. 

He offered her his arm. “Let’s go then, before they decide to carry on without us,” he said.

She folded her arm through his, and he was pleased to see a small smile press the corners of her mouth.

The great hall was dressed with streaming banners of white and silver and red, the combined colors that King Jon and Queen Daenerys had made their standard. The braziers around its columns had been taken away, and in their place some thousand candles had been set to burn, lighting the hall with a shimmering, hazy light. Cloth of bright young red covered the open path of floor to the dais where the newly crowned king and queen stood in their finery. The Iron Throne was missing behind them; they had commanded it be taken away and destroyed, and with its absence the room seemed entirely changed. It was as though an air of horror that had haunted Jaime since his youth had lifted. In the throne's place sat two newly made thrones carved of dark oak that were joined together, a symbol of the equal rule the king and queen promised. And to either side of the hall stood the hundreds of people who had come to observe the ceremony, their faces shining in the evening light. It was near enough to take his breath away.

Jaime and Brienne passed among them to approach the dais, where Arya and Tormund already stood. Tyrion waited at the queen’s side, an unsuppressed smile reigning over his face. Jaime ducked his eyes from his brother’s regard, and as he did he noticed a man standing to Tyrion’s right. He was not a man Jaime had ever lain eyes on before. Yet he knew him at once. This was Lord Selwyn of Tarth, Brienne’s father.

He had her height and her bare, broad face, her singular sort of air that said at once openness and also something of a deep resolve. And though there was something about her in Lord Selwyn’s brow and eyes, Jaime noticed that this man’s eyes were a fair grey, the color of the coast on a somber day. _The blue is hers._

Jaime risked a glance to Brienne, who must have seen by now that her father stood before them. And true enough she stood beside him with tears in her eyes. Jaime dropped his arm away from her gently. There was a tremor in Lord Selwyn’s chin as the two met eyes, and that was not the only part of him that shook. A man stood at the old Evenstar’s side supporting him discreetly at the elbow. Despite his stature and his proud countenance, he was unwell.

Jaime’s attention was diverted by a clap of Daenerys’ hands. The room fell to silence. Though he had been knighted so long ago, and stood in this hall on so many other occasions before, his heart set to beating like a drum. 

This time, it would all be different. 

“Today we honor the heroes of our time,” the queen spoke, “without whom we would be lost forever.”

Somewhere to the back of the hall, where the people flowed out listening though they could not see past the crowd, a child’s voice sang out a happy cheer. The crowds met it with a rumble of laughter, and they began to applaud. Daenerys smiled. Her white hair gleamed in the evening light that streamed through the high windows behind her in cords of hazy gold. 

“Their deeds will live on in song for a thousand years to come, and we will await their melodies happily. But today the memory is still new in our hearts. It is well that we should think on the Battle of the Living together.”

She hesitated, letting the hall consider her words before she said, “One of your five, Ser Beric Dondarrion, was lost in battle. We grieve him and remember his sacrifice.” Jaime bowed his head at the memory. Dondarrion rode with him in the forests and had died as his flaming sword bit into one of the strange demons. The sword had fallen from his grasp, at last extinguished.

The queen gazed down at them. Her voice rose again. “Before the presence of the kingdoms and by the eyes of the old gods and the new, we celebrate you all, even your fallen, and we name you the Knights of Winter.” 

“Kneel,” Jon said then from beside her, his low voice echoing out over the hall, and he looked over them each, his warm brown eyes falling on them in succession, “Arya Stark of Winterfell. Tormund Giantsbane of the free folk and the Lands Beyond the Wall. Ser Jaime Lannister of Casterly Rock. And Brienne of Tarth.”

They knelt down, bowing their heads. Jon moved along their line, alighting them on each shoulder with his Valyrian blade. 

“Ser Arya,” he said, “Ser Tormund.”

Snow moved to him, his sword touching down over his shoulders. Though he looked to the ground between his feet, his chest swelled, his heart pounding.

“Ser Jaime.”

At last Jaime looked to where Brienne knelt beside him. Her face was upturned, bright and pale and shining. She’d long deserved it. Maybe from the first day she picked up a sword, she was fated for the honor that eluded her by the sole circumstance of her sex. And now the whole world would see the truth of what she had always been. How he had always known her. 

“Ser Brienne,” the king said. He smiled down at her. “Evenstar of Westeros. Champion of the Battle of the Living. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“Arise,” rang the voice of the queen, and the hall erupted with applause, and they stood, together, while all around them the people cheered and called out Brienne’s name. And before her, perhaps proudest of them all, her father laughed and clapped his hands.

 …

 

With each passing day that they remained at King’s Landing, the winds coming in off the sea seemed to grow warmer with the promise of spring, and the refugees who had come seeking protection in the times of war began to depart slowly, farmers talking of frost breaking and tilling the fields, and children swung off of their parent's arms as they cheerily told one another their own battle stories. Meera Reed had gone back to Greywater Watch with her people, and the ones once known as wildlings departed for the lands in the Gift, where they had been promised settlement and peace. Brienne had arranged for them to leave as well to set sail for Tarth by the end of the fortnight, but for the time they remained in the White Tower. Tyrion made it known to her that she was wanted in the capital— _The people want to know you and see you_ , he had said, _let them have that honor before you go_ —and Jaime knew it was only grudgingly that she assented to stay as long as they had.

Still, as time went on, the court only grew fuller and more resplendent with new lords and ladies than Jaime had ever known it, and there were a great many council meetings and lordings and knightings they were both asked to attend, and the days passed quickly. Gendry, Robert’s bastard, had been recognized by the new king and queen and now would be styled Gendry Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End. And Arya had let slip to Jaime she would be going with him, a piece of information with which he had happily used to tease her.

At the last of the open council meetings, Jon and Daenerys revealed they sought to reinstate greater powers to the kingdoms, so that the nobility might better serve their people and their king and queen. Sansa Stark was awarded the title of Warden of the North, and Yara Greyjoy Warden of the Seas, and Tyrion, the new lord of Casterly Rock, the Warden of the West. That left the South to the Martells, who had yet to put forward their own leader, and the East to Brienne and to Tarth. Davos Seaworth was given the honor of serving as the king’s Hand, and Missandei of Naath the queen’s. A new royal guard was being formed as well with Addam as its Lord Commander. 

Jaime was thinking of this as he stripped down to his undershirt and breeches, throwing the rest of the clothes over a chair.

At the small table of his solar, Brienne was reading a letter from the steward of Evenfall Hall by the light of a candle. He walked to her and set his jaw on the crown of her head, running his hand and stump along her arms. She was dressed in one of his shirts, a habit she’d recently taken up.

“Brienne.”

“Mm,” she said, plainly distracted. He set his hand down on top of the parchment. “Jaime,” she protested, but he was already laughing, and she was already climbing out of her chair, huffing, smiling.

“It can wait.”  

“And what is it that so direly needs my attention?”

He grinned in answer, and she kissed him, her hands coming up to either side of his face while he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to him, languishing in the way she made his heart speed and his blood sing. He encouraged her to open his mouth to him, and she did, deepening the kiss, pressing herself close.

She sighed into him, and he felt along the muscled curve of her back, her torso, her ass. _Gods._

Jaime tilted his face away from hers.

“You do still intend to take me as your husband?”

Her great blue eyes widened.

“Well, we haven’t discussed it since I last made my offer,” he said levelly, though in truth his head pounded, and he tipped uncertainly toward the oblivion of whether she might, after all this time, turn him aside. “I don’t want to…presume.”

“Yes,” she said then, her face turning a lovely crimson. “I—yes. Why else would you come with me to Tarth?”

“To see your fabled isle, of course,” he joked, but he was soaring now, elated.

She answered his jest with another kiss, wrapping her arms languidly around him, and as she held him he grew drowsy with comfort in her embrace. _She will be my wife. There will be a place for me at her side, a future. A home, maybe._ Jaime rested his brow against hers.

“I had thought,” he began, though his sentence trailed.

Brienne drew away an inch as he spoke, regarding him through her pale eyelashes.

“The sword,” he said, his throat dry. “My…sword. It might require a different name.”

“What would you call it?” she asked softly.

Widow’s Wail was Joffrey’s invention, and not befitting the memory of the greatsword Eddard Stark once bore—the sword whose steel had made the twin blades they now carried. He thought to replace the stones of the hilt with blue ones, stones blue as ice, or blue as the sky the day the dead were defeated, or blue as Brienne’s eyes.

Jaime smiled, moving her hair out of her face.

“Sapphire, perhaps.”

 

 


End file.
